And this statement:

“Statistical procedures are designed specifically for the purpose of making sense of data that have been distorted by random errors”

Doesn’t make any sense. The vast majority of statistical methods (OLS, etc) assume errors are random, otherwise their findings are errant. The more difficult task occurs when errors are not random, requiring various corrective measures. The point about different types of errors implies that they are not random, which is why we find the dataset suspect.

Not as you stated: “Finally, joining and leaving an insurgent groups is not a costless process, as insurgent groups have recruitment procedures and often violently prevent exit. What effect does group pressure play in the way insurgents respond to a “global signal?”

First of all, I fail to see how the article suffered from the ecological problem. The author’s never claimed to be saying anything about individual behavior. They were talking about what tended to be true across individual cases.

Second, the reliance on media reports is not that problematic for a project of this scope. Everyone knows that the media record of things like war deaths is often inaccurate and/or incomplete. That leaves two options:

1. The media reports were consistently flawed. So nearly all of every 100 reports overstated/understated the number of deaths by a certain amount.

2. The media reports were randomly flawed. So out of every, say, 100 possible reports of war deaths, a random number of them were inaccurate or missing, and of those inaccurate reports, each over-reported or under-reported the number of deaths by a random amount.

If option number 1 is correct, and the amount of distortion was consistent across the board, then the distortion doesn’t matter because the overall power-law distribution would be the same. And, besides that, we would have to believe that those flaws were consistent not only across individual deaths but also across all of the different insurgencies for which the author’s found similar results.

That means option 2 is the more likely one. Random noise certainly affects the soundness of the study, but not enough to discount the findings. It just means there was a bunch of random errors embedded in the reports. That is why they used statistics. Statistical procedures are designed specifically for the purpose of making sense of data that have been distorted by random errors in reporting. Accounting for those errors is literally built into the programming.

They also accounted for option 2 by replicating their study for a variety of different insurgency situations. They found the same patterns for every country they looked at. That means that if there was gross flaws in the reporting, those flaws were at least consistent in every situation, which would mean that option 1 was true, which would mean that the flaws weren’t a problem.

Media-reporting flaws is certainly a concern when you want to say something about how many people died in a specific instance. But it you’re talking about overall patterns, as these authors were, it’s simply not a problem.

Third, you failed to note that, on a number of points, the authors interpreted their results in a way that was not necessarily supported by their equations. They placed a lot of emphasis on things like insurgents’ desire to have news of their attacks reported by the media, which they modeled as a “global signal.”. The equation they used to model that signal only dealt with the availability of information about the relative vulnerability of various targets. It can very reasonably be interpreted as representing that “private information” that you said the study failed to take into account. The basic model was sound, their interpretation of it was not. It’s important to distinguish between those two things when forming an opinion of their work.

Fourth, a study doesn’t have to say everything about insurgencies for it to say something useful. The study showed that a couple basic patterns prevailed across insurgencies, and that those patterns could be explained by a couple simple mechanisms, mostly dealing with the availability of information and freedom of movement. It showed how the shape and scope of insurgencies are limited by a few basic factors, regardless of more context-specific factors.

And last, you said, “Without considering the human element, without contextualizing the numbers in politics, culture, society, even personality, any study of insurgencies will, ultimately, come up short.” At least the Nature article authors presented evidence and reasoning for their claims. All you presented was a straw man.

In the end, you displayed a disappointing lack of familiarity with what the article actually said. You picked out a few surface issues, hyped them up as much as Gourley hyped up his article in his TED talk, and then made your argument for an alternative based on assumption rather than evidence.

That’s too bad. I had come to expect better from this blog.

Still, the article’s good.

However, reality is not real; death is real, and you are trying to assign something real to something that is not real. My guess is the data BGDSJ is using is as close to the reality of everyone, the insurgent, the incumbent, and the media to make it real. While the story about 10 percent of Chechens live in South Waziristan may not be real, it may have seemed real to someone. It maybe reality base, but just not real, or correct. Throw it all in the same pot, and call it reality of the insurgency you’re fighting. Subtract what you can, but remember it is all reality based.

While the insurgent may have real information that is private, his reality is not. His reality is one shared by the incumbent, the insurgency, and the media. If the data used in plotting the power-law is not just real, but reality based, then perhaps the kind of structure the power-law tells of, will be reality based. A sociologist then may be able to give you a better image of what that structure consists of, but the fact you have the slope is a start. If this slope flattens-out, gets steeper, or goes positive, the information this provides is useful, in itself.

As an example, If the slope flattens out, you may want to switch sides; if it gets steeper, you may want to slack-off just a bit, or you will be out of a job; or if it goes positive, you may want to let the guys on the ground know (if they don’t know already) and be on the look-out for the cause of the structure change.

While the guy or gal on the ground fighting the insurgency knows what’s real better than those at the battalion level, neither may have all the information necessary to understand the reality of the situation. The effort of the BGDSJ could go a long way in connecting what is real with reality.