The Lancet publishes unverified claims of 186K deaths in Gaza, outlets report it as fact
July 9, 2024
The Lancet – a major scientific and medical journal – has just said that the death toll in Gaza might be 186,000 people. This is not true.
We are not stating – nor insisting, guessing nor even hoping – that any specific number of deaths in Gaza is true or not. But this does raise alarms over the standard of proof of the claim itself and also that “The Lancet” said so.
The piece itself is here. It’s a letter in The Lancet. There’s a technical difference between a letter “to” and “in” a scientific journal but that’s not the point here. What we do need to know is that this simply isn’t subject to the normal standards of scientific checking. These are claims made by the people who wrote the letter. Sure, it’s possible to argue about those claims – they seem to think that the reported numbers from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry are anything other than propaganda, for example.
But that’s not the point, either. Instead, the point is this. From an unsourced and unchecked claim in a letter in The Lancet we immediately get to:
The Lancet has just published this article “conservatively” estimating that the death toll in the Gaza genocide could be 186,000 people or more.
It’s not an article (which would be subject, even in The Lancet, to some checking) it’s a letter. But see how the claim changes? Or other examples:
The Lancet, the prestigious peer-reviewed British medical journal, has warned that the true death toll in the Gaza genocide could be 186,000 or more.
Well, no, “The Lancet” hasn’t, nor has there been full peer review. But it suits the World Socialist Web Site to say so, obviously. Or:
Gaza toll could exceed 186,000, Lancet study says
That’s Al Jazeera. Or:
Lancet journal: Gaza war death toll may have reached 186,000. Report suggests that 7.9 per cent of Gaza population has died since the war began on October 7
That’s not even what the letter does say. Or even:
Gaza death toll could reach half a million: Lancet
“The Lancet”, that major medical and scientific magazine, hasn’t said anything of the sort. But some will take a letter and make it into that.
Which is the very thing we have to be careful about. What people say is being said is not, often enough, what is being said.
We all know that a letter published in the New York Times is different from the reporting, or the editorials, of the New York Times. But some will play on us not knowing that about scientific journals.