Crimes of War

A seminar for editors sponsored by The Crimes of War Project and The Freedom Forum

Day Two, Panel Three: The Scientific Investigation of War Crimes

Moderator: Eric Stover, Director, Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, and Vice President, Crimes of War Project

Discussion

ERIC STOVER: Because we have the other panel, let's just -- two questions. They're going to be here. We can talk later in the break and so on. So let's just take two questions.

A PARTICIPANT: Any specific advice you have for the last two speakers. When we're at the crossroads, what we should be asking and thinking and also, I know we're not supposed to snap femurs off the soil and bring them out as evidence, but, again, there must be very specific tools, scientific investigation that we as reporters can use when we get to these zones.

BILL HAGLUND: The overhead of the satellite of the Northern Kasaba grave was one example. Oftentimes, in these areas you're going to find clothing protruding from the ground, bones protruding from the ground. Photographs of those, even just a simple little ruler in those would be helpful. If that magnificent photo of the grave in Brcko is just unprecedented. The awareness of keeping track of where these things are and what's happening now is your people are being queried about witnesses they have -- as far as the press -- witnesses they have when they've been in these areas. They've been in there at a time when these scenes are pristine and when many of the witnesses are still around. By the time the investigators get there, these witnesses are distributed all over. And that's what -- those are just a couple things.

PATRICK BALL: We had one, which is carry a GPS locator. All the handy-dandy nifty gizmos that were discussed earlier this morning. Carry a GPS locator and when you find something of interest, push the save button so that we can then locate that within a 10 square meter grid point. Again, that's incredibly helpful for the database stuff and the statistical stuff. Let me give three suggestions. First off, somebody offers you a statistic and it doesn't have a margin of error on it, you probably shouldn't print it. Okay? Professional, scientific statistical work is more concerned with variance than with the point. Professional statistical work will have a margin of error on it. None of you would ever think to print a public opinion survey that didn't have an error, right? Ever. So, if somebody says to you, “You know, 6,000 people were killed over there.” You say, “Plus, minus? How do you know that?” There should be a margin of error around that. If they have done a scientific survey or if they have done one of the other non-population-based scientific methods to make quantity estimate, there's a margin of error there. So find out what it is and print it. That's probably the single most important thing with statistics.

The second is if you don't have a scientific process to produce statistics, get as many different estimates from people who don't like each other as you can. And that will give you a very informal rule of thumb that will probably still be on the low end. Because people in mass killings estimate low. Strange as that may seem.

And finally, if you're in doubt, and this is for editors, call a demographer or a statistician. These are people who make their living with mortality estimates. And this is what this stuff is. There are an army of these people who would be thrilled to get a phone call from you and doing a little back of the envelope estimation, and be able to tell you if 100,000 people killed in 60 days is reasonable. It's not in Kosovo. But 10,000 might have been reasonable. So people can give you that kind of thing and compare killing rates. And if people want to get my contact information, I'll be happy to put you in touch with demographers. Less than a month ago, I was at the Population Association of America meetings, the professional association of demographers. And I talked it up. I said, you know, “Well, I'm going to be talking to some people in a few weeks who are press people. Would anybody in here be willing?” And every hand in the room went up. So there is a wide a community of experts you can call on who can help you do something, to figure out if something's reasonable.

A PARTICIPANT: I just have an obvious question. Patrick had raised it, maybe he can answer it. And that is in Kosovo there is quite a dispute about the numbers. Can you give us your best guidance or tell us where we find the best guidance?

PATRICK BALL: Hypothetically, there might be an article published in an important scientific journal in the next month on that issue that does not have my name on it, so I can say that. I also think that the Goldstone Commission will have good numbers on that. Right now, I don't know of anyone who's got good scientific estimates, but we can say there must be at least 2,100. Okay? Because we have bodies. And there's probably not more than 20,000. I wouldn't want to try to narrow it down much inside that range right now. And I don't think that anybody who does narrow it down within that range, is doing so on a scientific basis. I think there is science, we're just not quite there yet. Sadly, we don't always do it in real time as well as should be needed.

A PARTICIPANT: I wanted to ask you, Chris, on the satellite photos, who's doing the analysis in the non-government community and can journalists trust the people who are doing the satellite photo analysis?

CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON: No. Who's doing it in the non-governmental community? Well, there's a couple ways to go. One is to work with reputable university experts. Another is to work with the Association for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, which is the main professional organization of people who specialize in this skill. They're having their national convention here in Washington next week. It's probably worth stopping by. Third is that there's an existing industry of value-added resellers, beltway bandits, and so forth who do this sort of analysis primarily for the intelligence community and they are quite good at it. But at the same token, their help is very expensive. I know that at least two of the major networks and several major news organizations have established working agreements with experts at Space Imaging and in some of the other companies that are helping them out. One thing that many journalists, and it doesn't require a big news organization, is if you track a half-a-dozen Web sites where various scientific organizations and companies that are in the business of collecting this information, will put up imagery that they find particularly attractive and interesting or revealing or whatever. And, almost without exception, each of those images is a story waiting to be told. So that's really quite simple and their experts are quite good.

ROY GUTMAN: That's the last word. No, I think we really need for the other panel. But thanks a lot. I want to just say thanks to Eric for putting together the panel and to the panelists for really enlarging, certainly in my case, my scope of understanding of what is possible in journalism and how to work with the scientific community. Eric, by the way, is the vice president of our project, the Crimes of War Project, and has thrown a tremendous effort into making it happen, bringing the book about, certainly bringing this conference about, and obviously the seminar. And I just -- we owe him a great debt of gratitude for his efforts for this.

Eric Stover, Bio.
Director, Human Rights Center, Institute of International Studies University of California, Berkeley and Member of the Board of Directors, Crimes of War Project

William D. Haglund, Bio.
Director, International Forensic Program, Physicians for Human Rights

Patrick Ball, Ph.D., Bio.
Deputy Director, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Program

Christopher Simpson, Bio.
Director, Project on Satellite Imagery and the News Media, American University, School of Communication

Roy Gutman, Bio.
International Security Reporter, Newsday, President, Crimes of War Project