An economics professor at RHUL who is interested in war. Chair of Every Casualty Counts and former Chair of Action on Armed Violence.
@mspagat@mastodon.sdf.org
Feb 20 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
1. Here's a thread that takes a close look at the thread of @GabrielEpsteinX I should say that I haven't tried to replicate the work but, knowing Gabriel, I'd be very surprised if anything is factually wrong. So my thread is about interpretations.
2. The main interpretive issue concerns the age/sex distribution of of deaths. Yes, youngish to pre-elderly males have been killed well out of proportion to their population numbers, but overrepresentation of this demographic is a generic feature of war.
Aug 22, 2025 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
1. A new @guardian investigation by @_EmmaGHreveals
and @yuval_abraham reveals an Israeli military database listing 8,900 named Hamas/PIJ fighters killed by May 2025. But we only have a reported number from an unseen list with unknown methodology. We need the actual data. 🧵
2. The transparency gap is stark: Gaza's MoH has released 12 detailed lists with names, ages, IDs - data we can analyse and examine. Israel keeps its list classified while dismissing Palestinian figures as propaganda. This double standard undermines credible assessment.
Jun 24, 2025 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1. New Paper "Violent and Nonviolent Death Tolls in the Gaza War: New Primary Evidence" by me, Jon Pedersen, @KShikaki , Michael Robbins, Eran Bendavid, @HavardHegre and Debarati Guha-Sapir
2. It is a household based survey of the Gaza Strip to measure both the violent and nonviolent death toll in the war. Field work was conducted between December 30, 2024 and January 5 2025.
Here are the 3 main take homes:
Dec 23, 2024 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1. Last week the Henry Jackson Society put out a report by @Mr_Andrew_Fox that savages the Gaza death toll statistics of the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) and chastises the media for credulous reporting on the Gaza death toll: henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/q…2. Here is my reply written with Gabriel Epstein of Israel Policy Forum:
2. This is a very nice article, especially the text quoted above.
However, I wish that @gcaw had pointed out that UNOCHA always had a much better alternative to acting as a conveyor belt for the unreliable figures of the Government Media Office.
Sep 19, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
1. This hardly qualifies as BigTime wrong but I do think that you're a bit harsh on Norman Angell although it does seem plausible that his is the saddest book on your shelf. @delong
2. As you say, on the eve of WW1 Angell argued that war was stupid and that everyone would lose. He sensed a big war in the air and was writing to try to stop it.
Sep 1, 2022 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
1. Something about the new new "Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan" has been nagging at me for the last few days and I couldn't put my finger on it until (weirdly) the death of Gorbachev.
tinyurl.com/24perwhs2. Way back in another life I used to study the Soviet economy (until it disappeared and I moved on to war). I realised that this plan reminds me of endless failed attempts to reform the Soviet economy, what one scholar called "the treadmill of economic reforms".
Sep 14, 2018 • 29 tweets • 6 min read
1. Here's a new thread on #HurricaneMaria death toll numbers.
First, there is no list of, e.g., 3,000 named individuals killed by the hurricane.
Mar 22, 2018 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
1/N Hi. This is worth a blog post which I'll do when I can clear some time.
But, briefly, I agree with many of the sentiments expressed in the @CharlesPPierce and also in the @nytimes piece that it's based upon.
2/N We should reflect on the impact of the Iraq war, including the human impact and there has been little of this marking the 15th anniversary of the invasion.
