Fifty people accepted an invitation to assess an article. Of the fifty, seventy-six percent (76%) agreed or strongly agreed that the Wikipedia article was accurate, and forty-six percent (46%) agreed or strongly agreed that it was complete.
Iraq Body Count project (IBC) is a web-based effort to record civilian deaths resulting from the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The metrics of each Wikipedia page examined included length, number of links to the page from other articles, and number of edits made to the page. This study also found that Wikipedia did not cover notable ISI highly cited researchers properly.
PMID 20653388. We have identified Wikipedia as an informative and accurate source for Pathology education and believe that Wikipedia is potentially an important learning tool for of the 'Net Generation'. ^ a b S. Robert Lichter, Ph.D,,: Are chemicals killing us?
The project quotes the top US general in Iraq, Tommy Franks, as saying "We don't do body counts". The quotation was from a discussion of the Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan and was referring to counts of enemy soldiers killed, in the context of using enemy body counts as a measure of military success. The website, which omits the context of the ...
IBC is purely a civilian count. IBC defines civilian to exclude Iraqi soldiers, insurgents, suicide bombers or any others directly engaged in war-related violence. A "min" and "max" figure are used where reports differ on the numbers killed, or where the civilian status of the dead is uncertain.
The IBC has received criticism from many sides. Some critics have focused on potential bias of sources. Others have raised concerns about the difficulty of distinguishing civilians from combatants. Others have criticized it for over or undercounting.
The IBC overview page states that its sources include "public domain newsgathering agencies with web access". They include sources that are from sites updated at least once a day, are "separately archived on the site, with a unique URL", are "widely cited or referenced by other sources", are in English, and have "fully public (preferably free) web-access"
The Lancet reference used is to Patrick Ball, Paul Kobrak, and Herbert F. Spirer and their 1999 book, State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection. From the introduction: "The CIIDH database consists of cases culled from direct testimonies and documentary and press sources.".
The IBC overview page states: "Results and totals are continually updated and made immediately available here and on various IBC web counters which may be freely displayed on any website or homepage, where they are automatically updated without further intervention."
Another study published in 2014 in PLOS ONE found that Wikipedia's information about pharmacology was 99.7% accurate when compared to a pharmacology textbook, and that the completeness of such information on Wikipedia was 83.8%.
Wikipedia and fact-checking includes the process through which Wikipedia editors perform fact-checking of Wikipedia, and also reuse of Wikipedia for fact-checking other publications, and also the cultural discussion of the place of Wikipedia in fact-checking.
Somewhat related to the "information loop", but perhaps more worrisome, is the propagation of misinformation to other websites (Answers.com is just one of many) which will often quote misinformation from Wikipedia verbatim, and without mentioning that it has come from Wikipedia. A piece of misinformation originally taken from a Wikipedia article will live on in perhaps dozens of other websites, even if Wikipedia itself has deleted the unreliable material.
In a 2004 piece called "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia", Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopædia Britannica, stated that Wikipedia errs in billing itself as an encyclopedia, because that word implies a level of authority and accountability that he believes cannot be possessed by an openly editable reference . McHenry argued that "the typical user doesn't know how conventional encyclopedias achieve reliability, only that they do". He added:
In 2007, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article written by Cathy Davidson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and English at Duke University, in which she asserts that Wikipedia should be used to teach students about the concepts of reliability and credibility.
Created in January 2007, the article on the fictional 18th-century naturalist Léon Robert de L'Astran was not deleted until June 2010, when a historian identified it as a hoax.
The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies ...
Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments . When census data cannot be collected, statisticians collect data by developing specific experiment designs and survey samples.
Statistics form a key basis tool in business and manufacturing as well. It is used to understand measurement systems variability, control processes (as in statistical process control or SPC), for summarizing data, and to make data-driven decisions. In these roles, it is a key tool, and perhaps the only reliable tool.
Probability is used in mathematical statistics to study the sampling distributions of sample statistics and, more generally , the properties of statistical procedures . The use of any statistical method is valid when the system or population under consideration satisfies the assumptions of the method.
A common goal for a statistical research project is to investigate causality, and in particular to draw a conclusion on the effect of changes in the values of predictors or independent variables on dependent variables . There are two major types of causal statistical studies: experimental studies and observational studies. In both types of studies, the effect of differences of an independent variable (or variables) on the behavior of the dependent variable are observed. The difference between the two types lies in how the study is actually conducted. Each can be very effective. An experimental study involves taking measurements of the system under study, manipulating the system, and then taking additional measurements using the same procedure to determine if the manipulation has modified the values of the measurements. In contrast, an observational study does not involve experimental manipulation. Instead, data are gathered and correlations between predictors and response are investigated. While the tools of data analysis work best on data from randomized studies, they are also applied to other kinds of data—like natural experiments and observational studies —for which a statistician would use a modified, more structured estimation method (e.g., Difference in differences estimation and instrumental variables, among many others) that produce consistent estimators .
Mathematical statistics is the application of mathematics to statistics. Mathematical techniques used for this include mathematical analysis, linear algebra, stochastic analysis, differential equations, and measure-theoretic probability theory.
Statistics is a mathematical body of science that pertains to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data, or as a branch of mathematics. Some consider statistics to be a distinct mathematical science rather than a branch of mathematics. While many scientific investigations make use of data, statistics is concerned with the use of data in the context of uncertainty and decision making in the face of uncertainty.
The concept of correlation is particularly noteworthy for the potential confusion it can cause. Statistical analysis of a data set often reveals that two variables (properties) of the population under consideration tend to vary together, as if they were connected. For example, a study of annual income that also looks at age of death might find that poor people tend to have shorter lives than affluent people. The two variables are said to be correlated; however, they may or may not be the cause of one another. The correlation phenomena could be caused by a third, previously unconsidered phenomenon, called a lurking variable or confounding variable. For this reason, there is no way to immediately infer the existence of a causal relationship between the two variables.
Iraq Body Count project (IBC) is a web-based effort to record civilian deaths resulting from the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Included are deaths attributable to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and criminal violence, which refers to excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion. As of February 2019, the IBC has recorded 183,249 – 205,785 civilian deaths. The IBC …
The IBC overview page states:
"This is an ongoing human security project which maintains and updates the world's only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention by the USA and its allies. The count includes civilian deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to th…
The IBC overview page states:
"This is an ongoing human security project which maintains and updates the world's only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention by the USA and its allies. The count includes civilian deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to th…
The IBC overview page states: "Deaths in the database are derived from a comprehensive survey of commercial media and NGO-based reports, along with official records that have been released into the public sphere. Reports range from specific, incident based accounts to figures from hospitals, morgues, and other documentary data-gathering agencies."
Project volunteers sample news stories to extract minimum and maximum numbers of civilian c…
The IBC overview page states that its sources include "public domain newsgathering agencies with web access". They include sources that are from sites updated at least once a day, are "separately archived on the site, with a unique URL", are "widely cited or referenced by other sources", are in English, and have "fully public (preferably free) web-access"
Primary sources used by the media are listed in the 2003 to 2005 IBC report. The sources are fol…
The IBC overview page states: "Results and totals are continually updated and made immediately available here and on various IBC web counters which may be freely displayed on any website or homepage, where they are automatically updated without further intervention."
Civilian deaths in the Iraq war (cumulative):
The figures above are those that appeared in real time on the IBC counters on or around those dates. However, those in the first line were increased radically in the following days and weeks. IBC's current Max figure for the entire invasion phase, up to 30 April 2003, now stands at 7,299. Because IBC performs analyses (e.g., accounts for multiple reports, eliminates overlaps, etc.), th…
Following are the yearly IBC Project violent civilian death totals, broken down by month from the beginning of 2003. The top of the IBC database page with the table (as of Jan 4, 2021) says 185,497 – 208,547 "Documented civilian deaths from violence". That page also says: "Gaps in recording and reporting suggest that even our highest totals to date may be missing many civilian deaths from violence."
The Iraq Body Count project states for the week ending 31 December 2006: "It was a truly violent year, as around 24,000 civilians lost their lives in Iraq. This was a massive rise in violence: 14,000 had been killed in 2005, 10,500 in 2004 and just under 12,000 in 2003 (7,000 of them killed during the actual war, while only 5,000 killed during the 'peace' that followed in May 2003). In December 2006 alone around 2,800 civilians were reported killed. This week there were over 560 civilian de…
The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. Wikipedia carries the general disclaimer that it can be "edited …
Wikipedia allows for anonymous editing; contributors are not required to provide any identification or an email address. A 2007 study at Dartmouth College of the English Wikipedia noted that, contrary to usual social expectations, anonymous editors were some of Wikipedia's most productive contributors of valid content. The Dartmouth study was criticized by John Timmer of the Ars Technica websi…
On October 24, 2005, British newspaper The Guardian published a story titled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" in which a panel of experts were asked to review seven entries related to their fields, giving each article reviewed a number designation from 0 to 10, but most received marks between 5 and 8. The most common critiques were poor prose, or ease-of-reading issues (three mentions)…
Sources accepted as reliable for Wikipedia may rely on Wikipedia as a reference source, sometimes indirectly. If the original information in Wikipedia was false, once it has been reported in sources considered reliable, Wikipedia can use them to reference the false information, giving an apparent credibility to falsehood. This in turn increases the likelihood of the false information being r…
Somewhat related to the "information loop" is the propagation of misinformation to other websites (Answers.com is just one of many) which will often quote misinformation from Wikipedia verbatim, and without mentioning that it has come from Wikipedia. A piece of misinformation originally taken from a Wikipedia article will live on in perhaps dozens of other websites, even if Wikipedia itself has deleted the unreliable material.
Inaccurate information may persist in Wikipedia for a long time before it is challenged. The most prominent cases reported by mainstream media involved biographies of living persons. The Seigenthaler incident demonstrated that the subject of a biographical article must sometimes fix blatant lies about his or her own life. In May 2005, a user edited the biographical article on John Seigenthale…
• Bourgeois v. Peters (2004), one of the earliest court opinions to cite and quote Wikipedia
• Essjay controversy
• Fictitious entry
• Ideological bias on Wikipedia
• Thomas Leitch (October 2, 2014), Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age, Johns Hopkins University Press, Wikidata Q108733210?