Basic stats, historical knowledge, and situational awareness beats propaganda all the time

A couple of weeks ago, I posted The virtuousness of blatant misandry discussing the reliance of Hamas advocates and antisemites on data that is demonstrably unreliable and likely unknowable at this time.  

I see a deeper reporting now from a week ago on the same issue of unreliable numbers.  From How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers by Abraham Wyner.  The subheading is The evidence is in their own poorly fabricated figures.  

I used static and aggregate numbers from a report which had just been released.  Wyner is using a different source of data and looking at daily reports from Hamas.  Different data and different approaches but similar conclusions.  

Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.

If Hamas’ numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.

Data sets are wonderful things because propagandists and deceivers often do not know how to mimic the natural variability in such data.  Because they don't do this, analytics can quickly determine that the data set is not actual data but manufactured data.  This happens frequently with papers in social sciences where the withdrawal and non-replication rates exceed 70%.  

They write plausible papers and they have data and analysis but they don't have real data and they don't know enough statistics to mimic the noisiness of natural system data.  It is one of the more frequent means by which they are caught.

Same with Hamas propaganda.  

Taken together, what does this all imply? While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.

There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked. Finally, on Feb. 15, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported.

Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.

None of this is esoteric statistics.  It is standard stats mixed with a little historical knowledge and a dab of situational awareness.  

That Hamas data is likely misleading and/or flat out wrong should be obvious to everyone in the legacy mainstream media.  But they do not have numerate or knowledgeable reporters anymore and their financial precariousness means that their business model rests solely on opinion journalism and press release journalism.  

If Hamas makes ridiculous numerical claims that are facially absurd, the claims are what the MSM trumpets, not the absurdity.