Hack

There really is no excuse for this crap these days. Note the ratio of actual analysis of methodology to bald assertion (none to some) and the ratio of even attempted analysis of numbers to rambling speculation about psychology (not very much to nearly all). McArdle claims to have "accumulated a fair store of knowledge on the subject"; precisely none of this store (which frankly I believe to be rather like Saddam Hussein's store of biological weapons - long since spirited off to Syria if it ever existed at all) is present in the article.

I also note the following:

Conversely, few of the study’s supporters expressed much pleasure at the news that an extra 450,000 people might be walking around in Iraq

Let's get this straight; anyone who, even by implication, accuses me of being the kind of person who is happy to think of hundreds of thousands of people being dead in order to prove me right in arguments on blogs, has insulted me about as deeply and personally as it's possible to do [1]. It's like being accused of Holocaust denial, and a similarly robust response is in order. Megan McArdle claims (in the course of this risible whine that she doesn't learn very much from people who are nasty to her. I suspect, therefore, that she is about to get a lot stupider. More to come.

[1] Saying stuff like ""The mechanism for collecting death certificates has broken down: it's not clear how many of the certificates are being recorded anywhere, but at any rate the central ministry doesn't seem to have all of them" without acknowledging that she argued the opposite case at length, and not crediting me for the number of times I explained this to her on her blog, is irritating, but the slight is only to my personal vanity and is therefore an order of magnitude less enraging than the vile accusation.