Bush Biographers--All Suicided

Four Bush biographers, Mark Lombardi, J.H. Hatfield, Danny Casalaro, and now Gary Webb--all "suicide" victims. What are the odds all of these people actually committing suicide?

Examining the male U.S.suicide rate for recent years
(http://www.suicidology.org/stats2001/1999datapage2.pdf), we can
extrapolate a conservative estimate of 17 male suicides per 100,000 people, or 0.017%. The odds of 4 specific, male biographers committing suicide would be the 4th power of 17/100000, or 8.3521 4.913 x 10^-17...roughly 1 chance 10,000,000,000,000,000. About as good a definition of impossible as you can get. A person would stand a better chance of playing the Canadian lottery 6/49 exactly twice in one's lifetime and winning ther grand jackpot BOTH TIMES! (That is, picking 6 numbers out of 49 possible numbers and matching all 6 numbers out of 6 random draws, on 2 separate occasions, and having only purchased two Canadian lottery tickets ever.) This calculation should be regarded as a conservative estimate: the actual odds against such a "coincidence" would be much greater. For example, if any of the biographers were female, the odds would be even greater.


http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/12/1709370_comment.php#1709433

if I had to study the man, I may be tempted to give it up too...

Now if they were biographers of Clinton, you'll get a different outcome.

book -- which I'm listening to on audio -- is fantastic. I highly recommend people downloading it from iTunes and listen to it while they blog. It called "The Family"

Maybe that is what he expects all of us dissenters to do as well!

You can't pick them based on the outcome -- you did not pick them randomly. Pick a set of RANDOM people of 100,000 BEFORE you know the outcome and if all of them are suicided, your stats would be right -- but you didn't choose these randomly, you chose them based on the outcome.

It's fair to say that there appears to be a high correlation between critical biographies of dubya and suicides.

However, that doesn't mean that the biographies are a direct cause of the suicides. It could be that suicidal people are drawn to writing biographies of shrubby.

If Kitty Kelley dies mysteriously than I WILL sit up and take notice! Meanwhile, all these "suicides" should be investigated thoroughly, I agree. It's just too soon to draw conclusions.

I agree that Kelley's book is very good!