Assessing Bias The Qualitative in the Quantitative, Darfuri War Fatalities and the Morality of War英文文献资料.docVIP

Socilogy Mind 2011. Vol.1, No.3, 105-113 Copyright ? 2011 SciRes. DOI:10.4236/sm.2011.13013 Assessing Bias: The Qualitative in the Quantitative, Darfuri War Fatalities and the Morality of War* Stephen Reyna Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute University of Manchester Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology Email: reyna@eth.mpg.de Received February 4 , 2011; revised March 19 , 2011; accepted April 22 , 2011. th th nd This paper formulates a strategy for assessing bias, and applies it to quantitative assessments of the disaster of war in Darfur [Sudan]. In so doing it argues for qualitative investigations of quantitative analyses. The strategy examines epistemic and political regimes with the goal of revealing the sources, the directions, and the forces of bias. Examples of bias are discussed to illustrate the strategy including, among others, the draw-a-person IQ test, questions about how old you are or whether you can bear children in Chad, and the US army’s Human Terrain System. Considerable attention is paid to US governmental biasing of its claims of war fatalities and genocide in Darfur. This biasing is shown to involve cherry picking, symbolic violence, and high-channel regimes of bias. It is shown how the bias assessment strategy may be of use in evaluating moral claims. Keywords: Bias Assessment, Qualitative/Quantitative Analyses, US Government Claims of Genocide In Darfur, Moral Judgment Introduction titative assessments; then it proceeds to consider sources of epis- temic bias, sources of political bias, and finally a case history of political bias in Darfur. The conclusion shows what such bias analysis can mean for judgment of morality. Darfur in the Sudan experienced the reoccurrence of grim warfare in 2003, with the onset of paramilitary operations against government targets