Abstract
Counting casualties in conflict zones faces both practical and ethical concerns. Drawing on procedures from risk analysis, we propose a general approach. It represents each death by standard features, having either essential value, for capturing the social and cultural meaning of individual casualties, or instrumental value, for relating patterns of casualties to possible causes and effects. We illustrate the approach with the choices involved in attempts to record casualties in Iraq and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and with natural disasters, as exemplified by Hurricane Katrina. We advocate institutionalizing the approach, so that recording casualties increases understanding, rather than suspicion.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Human Rights Watch (2005, footnote 32) reports a communication from the press office of the Multi-National Force citing the practical difficulties of recording casualties, arguing, “It would be irresponsible to give firm estimates.” That might be a valid defense for an information source criticized for any imprecision and an invalid one for an information consumer eager for any properly qualified estimate.
A Google search for “Tommy Franks” “body counts” yielded 12,200 hits on August 26, 2005, and 41,400 on October 29, 2006 (recognizing the imperfections in these counts).
All quotations are from this site, accessed most recently on January 1, 2006.
IBC used special procedures for Fallujah: http: //www.iraqbodycount.net/details/x360_notes.php.
The data have two known gaps: (1) data on Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinians within Israel, for May and June 2005. Historically, the monthly number has typically been between 0 and 2, peaking at 13. (2) The July 2005 report of two Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians does not specify the age group of the dead. In previous months, the number of minors has typically been zero and never more than one.
This text from a September 14 CNN interview (by Wolf Blitzer of his producer Peter Tedeschi) suggests the kinds of concern: “Well Wolf, we were just in Long Beach, Mississippi, west of Gulfport a few hours ago. And we’re seeing barbed wire strewn across the entire length of the city about a half mile up from the Gulf of Mexico. So when it's completed, we will see about four and a half miles of rolling barbed wire by a half mile down to the water. What security guards there are telling us is that they want to keep looters out. But what some military police told me privately was that they expect to find a lot of bodies in the area, that they’re finding a debris field where very nice, middle to upper middle class homes once existed. And that they can't even get into the debris field in order to be able to find the bodies.”
The singer Clarence Gatemouth Brown was one of those indirect fatalities, evacuating just before the storm and dying from heart problems, sometime after learning that his home had been destroyed (Ratliff, 2005).
References
Atran, Scott. (2006, Spring). “The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism,” The Washington Quarterly 29, 127–147.
Bergner, Daniel. (2005, Aug. 14). “The Other Army,” New York Times Magazine 28–35, 50–58.
B’tselem. (2005). Statistics. Jerusalem: The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territory.
Bunch, Will. (2005, September 13). “Where Are the Funerals?” PNonline. http://www.pnionline.com/ dnblog/attytood/archives/002361.html.
Burnham, Gilbert, Riyahd Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts. (2006, October 12). “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-sectional Cluster Sample Survey.” The Lancet, DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69491-9.
Cabinet Strategy Office. (2002). Risk and Uncertainty. London: Author.
Canadian Standards Association. (1997). Risk Management Guidelines for Decision Makers (Q850). Ottawa: Author.
Centers for Disease Control. (2003). Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting. Hyattsville, MD: Author.
Confehr, Clint. (2005, September 10). “FEMA Mortuary Move Irritates Volunteer,” Shelbyville Times-Gazette.
Conyers, John. (2005, December 7). “Members of Congress Ask Bush to Stop Undercounting U.S. Casualties.” Washington, DC: U.S. Congress.
Daponte, Beth O. (2003). “Why Estimate Direct and Indirect Casualties from War? The Rule of Proportionality and Casualty Estimates.” Unpublished manuscript.
Daponte, Beth O. (1993). “A Case Study in Estimating Casualties from War and Its Aftermath: The 1991 Persian Gulf War,” PSR Quarterly 3(2), 57–66.
Dardagan, Hamit, John Sloboda, Kay Williams, and Peter Bagnall. (2005). “A Dossier of Civilian Casualities.” http: //www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr12.php.
Davies, Clarence (Ed.). (1996). Comparing Environmental Risks. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.
Department of Defense. (2005, October). Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq. http://www.defenselink. mil/news/Oct2005/d20051013iraq.pdf.
Drew, Christopher and Tresha Mabile. (2005, June 7). “Desert Graves Yield Evidence to Try Hussein,” New York Times, A1 & A10.
Environmental Protection Agency. (1993). Guide to Risk Comparison Processes. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Environmental Protection Agency. (2000). Toward Integrated Environmental Decision Making (SAB-EC-00-011). Washington, D.C.: Author.
Epstein, Edward. (2002, March 23). “Success in Afghan War Hard to Gauge: U.S. Reluctance to Produce Body Counts Makes Proving Enemy's Destruction Difficult,” San Francisco Chronicle.
Fischhoff, Baruch. (2005). “Cognitive Processes in Stated Preference Methods.” In Karl-Göran Mäler and Jeffrey Vincent (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Economics (pp. 937–968). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Fischhoff, Baruch, Paul Slovic, Sarah Lichtenstein, Stephen Read, and Barbara Combs. (1978). “How Safe Is Safe Enough? A Psychometric Study of Attitudes towards Technological Risks and Benefits,” Policy Sciences 8, 127–152.
Fischhoff, Baruch, Stephen Watson, and Chris Hope. (1984). “Defining Risk,” Policy Sciences 17, 123–139.
Fisk, Robert. (2005, August 17). “Up to 20 Per Cent of the Bodies Are Never Identified, Many of the Dead Have Been Tortured or Disfigured.” The Independent. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/ fisk/article306436.ece.
Florig, H. Keith, M. Granger Morgan, Kara M. Morgan, Karen E. Jenni, Baruch Fischhoff, Paul S. Fischbeck, and Michael DeKay. (2001). “A Deliberative Method for Ranking Risks (1): Overview and Test Bed Development,” Risk Analysis 21, 913–922.
Goodin, Julia and Randy Hanzlick. (1997). “Mind Your Manners: General Results from the National Association of Medical Examiners Manner of Death Questionnaire,” American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology 18(3), 224–227.
Graham, Bradley. (2005, October 24). “Enemy Body Counts Revised: US Is Citing Tolls to Show Success in Iraq,” Washington Post, p. A1.
Hanzlick, Randy. (2005). “Quality Assurance Review of Death Certificates: A Pilot Study,” American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology 26(1), 63–65.
HM Treasury. (2005). Managing Risks to the Public. London: Author.
Holt, James. (2006, March 12). “The Way We Life Now: Math Murders.” New York Times Magazine.
Human Rights Watch. (2003). “Hearts and Minds: Post-war Civilian Deaths in Baghdad Caused by U.S. Forces,” Human Rights Watch 15(9E).
Human Rights Watch. (2005). “A Face and a Name: Civilian Victims of Insurgent Groups in Iraq,” Human Rights Watch, 17(9E).
icasualties.org. (2003). Where Do the Numbers Come from? http://icasualties.org/oif/Methodology.aspx.
icausalties.org. (2005). Partial list of contractor casualties in Iraq. http://icasualties.org/oif/Civ.aspx
Institute of Medicine. (2003). Medicolegal Death Investigation System: Workshop Summary. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Lowrance, William. (1976). Of Acceptable Risk. Los Angeles: Kaufmann.
Marcus, Carla. (2006, May 15). “Identifying Corpses,” http://onthescene.msnbc.com/baghdad/2006/05/ identifying_cor.html.
Morgan, Kara M., Michael L. DeKay, Paul S. Fischbeck, M. Granger Morgan, Baruch Fischhoff, and H.K. Florig. (2001). “A Deliberative Method for Ranking Risks (2): Evaluation of Validity and Agreement among Risk Managers,” Risk Analysis 21, 923–938.
Neal, Terry M. (2005, September 8). “Hiding Bodies Won't Hide the Truth,” Washington Post.
National Association of Medical Examiners. (2005). Death Registry. www.orainc.com/ndr.
National Research Council. (1996). Understanding Risk. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
O’Brien, Mary. (2000). Risk. Cambridge: MIT Press.
O’Neill, Ann. (2005). “Identifying Victims a Grueling Task: Every Corpse Gets a Number, Not All Will Get a Name,” http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/09/katrina.morgue/index.html.
Peterson, Roger D. (2002). Understanding Ethnic Violence. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Presidential/Congressional Commission on Risk. (1998). Risk Management. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Radlauer, Don. (2002, September 29). “An Engineered Tragedy: Statistical Analysis of Casualties in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. http://www.ict.org.il/ articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=439.
Ratliff, Ben. (2005, September 12). “Guitarist Clarence Gatemouth Brown Dies at 81,” New York Times.
Roberts, Lee, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham. (2004). “‘Mortality’ Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey.” The Lancet 364, 1857–1864.
Royal Commission on Environmental Protection. (1998). Setting Environmental Standards. London: Author.
Sachs, Jeffrey. (2004, December 2). “Iraq's Civilian Dead Get No Hearing in the United States.” Daily Star (Lebanon), http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=10594.
Slayman, A.L. (1996, October 16). Reburial Dispute. http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/kennewick. html.
Slovic, Paul. (1987). “Perceptions of Risk,” Science 236, 280–285.
Sly, Liz. (2005, August 11). “Iraq in Transition: Bombs Bad Enough, But Guns Are Worse. Death Toll from Shootings Soars.” Chicago Tribune.
Starr, Chauncey. (1969). “Social Benefit Versus Technological Risk,” Science 165, 1232–1238.
Tavernise, Sabrina. (2005, October 30). “US Quietly Issues Estimate of Iraqi Civilian Casualties,” New York Times.
Treasury Board. (2002). Communications Policy of the Government of Canada. Ottawa: Author.
Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. (1974). “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,” Science 185, 1124–1131.
U.S. Department of Justice. (1999). Death Investigation: A Guide for the Scene Investigator. Washington, D.C.: Author.
U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Division of Vital Statistics. (2001). Report of the Panel to Evaluate the U.S. Standard Certificates. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Vega, Cecilia M. (2005, September 13). “As Bodies Recovered, Reporters Are Told ‘No Photos, No Stories,’” San Francisco Chronicle.
Vendatam, Shankar. (2005, December 27). “A Political Debate on Stress Disorder As Claims Rise, VA Takes Stock,” Washington Post.
Viscusi, W. Kip, and Richard Zeckauser. (2004). “The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies and the Misjudgment of Recklessness,” American Law and Economics Review 6(1), 72–94.
Walzer, Michael. (1992). Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Examples (2nd edition). New York: Basic Books.
Wecht, Cyril H. and Victor W. Weedn. (2005). “Forensic Pathology.” In Cyril H. Wecht (ed.), Forensic Science and Law: Investigative Applications in Criminal, Civil and Family Justice. Sudbury: International.
Wilson, Jamie. (2005, October 26). “Casualty of a War a World Away,” The Guardian.
Acknowledgments.
Research support from the National Science Foundation (SES-0433152, SBE-0527396) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is gratefully acknowledged, as are comments from Beth DaPonte, Keith Florig, Barry Pavel, Roger Peterson, Kiron Skinner, Victor Weedn, Richard Wilson, and members of the World Federation of Scientists Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism. The views expressed are those of the authors.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
JEL Classification D74 · D78 · D81 · F51 · H56 · I18 · N40 · Q54
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fischhoff, B., Atran, S. & Fischhoff, N. Counting casualties: A framework for respectful, useful records. J Risk Uncertainty 34, 1–19 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-006-9001-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-006-9001-6