Harvard and John Hopkins University create wild estimates!!
This is one of the worst kinds of research that one can come across. The Cambridge, Harvard and John Hopkins University manufacture wild estimates out of no where and the intention is to showcase how brutal the people of India are.
Please note, every bit of it is a lie as radical feminists based in US, try to compete with each other in running this rumour mill with wild estimates.
Times Reports, Fire is one of the leading causes of death among young women in India — but you wouldn’t know it by looking at government statistics. Or so says a study published in the British medical journal The Lancet. By examining census figures, death certificates from urban hospitals and “verbal autopsy” reports from rural communities, three researchers from Cambridge, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University estimated that more than 100,000 women were killed by fires in a single year — more than six times the number reported by police. “These deaths share common causes,” the authors write, “including kitchen accidents, self-immolation, and different forms of domestic abuse.”
On “dowry deaths”: Though the Indian media has devoted substantial coverage to fire-related deaths in public areas like schools and movie theaters, far less attention has been dedicated to incidents that occur within the home, especially those known as “dowry deaths.” “A dowry death is the killing of a young woman by members of her conjugal family for bringing insufficient dowry, and is commonly executed by first dousing the woman with kerosene and then setting her alight,” the report notes. But too often, such murders are disguised as accidents or suicides. “It is well known,” the authors write, “that police can be extremely lax in registering reports and that, in cases of suspected criminality, family members of a victim might be able to bribe police to avoid investigation.”
What is the problem with this Research paper published in Lancet?
The research paper completely depends on another research by Gajalakshmi, Peto, PETO Richard; to estimate percentage of fire accident out of all deaths registered. It says,
“We estimated these by age and sex with a verbal autopsy survey of 39 000 deaths done in a rural Tamil Nadu district by Gajalakshmi and Peto. This study included about 3500 suicides that were tabulated in four age groups by method of suicide. Overall, 10% of all men’s suicides and 16% of all women’s suicides were committed with fire.”
The Lancet authors have found that in 2001, there are a total 8.55 million deaths all over India. These are deaths due to natural causes, injuries, suicides and all other possible causes. Then they directly used the percentages “estimated” in Gajalakshmi et al, for fire accident deaths. As the estimates by Gajalakshmi et al, are flawed, so this flaw is carried forward to this research paper as well. The Gajalakshmi et al, research article has others serious flaws as well, for example it has blown up the suicide and accident percentages by 6 to 8 times.
The authors (researchers at Harvard and John Hopkinds) in Lancet did not question the estimates provided by Gajalakshmi et al, because it suited them and their preconceived radical feminist mindset that there is genocide of women going on inside Indian homes.
That Gajalakshmi et al paper is so bad that, it claims the suicide rate of Indians is at 62/100000, which means Indians are the most depressed and most craziest in the world as the world wide suicide rate is just 11 per 100,000. The suicide rate of Indians is almost same as the suicide rate in the world.
Suicide rates in rural Tamil Nadu, South India: Verbal autopsy of 39 000 deaths in 1997–98
By Vendhan Gajalakshmi and Richard Peto ( Full Paper )
Results Section of Paper says:
The verbal autopsy was done for 38 836 deaths. Injuries accounted for 18.5% of the total deaths. About half of these were suicides. The average annual suicide rate for men and women were 71 and 53/100 000, respectively. Three-fourths of all suicides were in the socially and economically productive age-group of 15–44 years. At ages 15–24 years the female suicide rate of 109/100 000 exceeded the male rate of 78/100 000; suicide was responsible for 49% of all deaths in women and 38% of all deaths in men at these ages.
1) Can 18.5% of population of a Country die of accidents and suicides? Did 1 out of 5 people dead people in your family die in an accident or suicide? This is outrageous and simply absurd.2) It claims, Suicide rates of men and women are 71 out of 100,000 and 53 out of 100,000 in India.According to World Health Organisation (WHO), the suicide rates of males and females in India are 12.2 and 9.1 respectively. So, the suicide data is blown up 6 times in this pathetic research paper.
Even a fifth graders can see that this research is terribly worng. How did the researchers at Harvard and John Hopkins overlook such gross inconsistencies and in stead used these estimates to compute the estimates for fire accidents.
The Paper says, “We estimated these by age and sex with a verbal autopsy survey of 39 000 deaths done in a rural Tamil Nadu district by Gajalakshmi and Peto. This study included about 3500 suicides that were tabulated in four age groups by method of suicide. Overall, 10% of all men’s suicides and 16% of all women’s suicides were committed with fire.”
As suicide data is blown up by a factor of 6, the suicides due to fire also get blown up by a factor of 6. So, they get an outrageous figure of 163,000 fatalities due to fire accidents.
With such shaddy research, these people have attempted to discredit the data by Indian Government. The American media shamelessly joined in.
The paper then says with overconfidence:
“In comparison with our national estimates of fire-related deaths, the National Crime Records Bureau of India, the only source quoted in published work, reported 19,093 fatal fire accidents in both sexes and 8978 suicides by fire and self-immolation in both sexes in 2005, based on collated police reports. These numbers are about a sixth of our estimate.”
Just because the research is from Harvard and John Hopkins University, the authors assumed that they can use the reputation of university to sell their wild estimates and shaddy research.
The American Universities have become breeding grounds of radical feminist hate groups, who produce all kinds of fake statistics to promote a gender war across the world. The American Government ignores them due to “gender votes”. The US Universities also churned out fake statistics that 25,000 women get killed for dowry every year in India, while the actual figure of such spousal homicides of women are around 2000.
The Radical Feminists have virtually destroyed the American society by breaking its family system. The crime rate in US is double that of India.
One can only hope US Universities start acting with compassion and responsibility. They have to check their data and research, whenever they make any claims that tend to discredit any other civilisation. US is only 200 years old and is almost a kid from Civilisational Age, where as Indian and China are 3000 year old civilisations, which had highest GDPs in the world for 1000s of years.
Insulting or maligning other civilisations is not a responsible way to conduct in this world.
Update:
Now, Steven D Levitt spreads this lie of 100,000 women dying due to burning in India in his book Superfreakonomics. Harper Collins published this book sometime back.
The Americans have lost their mind. The obsession with civilisational superiority has degraded their morals or sense of mental balance.