Just before the 2006 election the British journal Lancet published what the Wall Street Journal calls a “wildly exaggerated” report claiming that casualties in Iraq had exceeded 650,000 since the U.S. invasion in 2003.
It now turns out that partisan billionaire George Soros paid for the report and that its co-authors, Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins University, had been against the war since it began and had given their report to Lancet on condition that it be published in time to influence the election.
Moreover, those who assembled the report failed to follow the usual scientific practice of making its data available for inspection by other researchers. (Editorial, “The Lancet’s Political Hit,” January 9)
In other words, these “scholars” delivered what Soros and the political left wanted to hear, and objective data be damned. Will those involved acknowledge and apologize for their blatant partisanship and disregard for truth? Will the Johns Hopkins administration denounce these academic hitmen? Don’t count on it.