Iraqi Death Stats

There's a big debate in Britain over them. Essentially, the editor of the Lancet has gone nuclear on Blair, turning a highly respected scientific journal into a political weapon. But he has a factual point. The Johns Hopkins study that estimated a human toll of 650,000 Iraqi casualties since the invasion was apparently backed up by Blair's own government scientists, but the prime minister ignored them. I find the number implausible on its face, but I'm not an expert in these things, and no one can doubt that the reality of Iraq is opaque at best. Here's some science-bloggy reax - here, and here.