Les Roberts (epidemiologist)

Les Roberts (epidemiologist) became prominent in the news just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election, for his study estimating that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the Iraq war, at a time when official U.S. government estimates were much lower. In October 2006, an expanded followup study was released that gave a point estimate of 651,000 deaths having occurred, within a 95 percent confidence interval from 300,000 to 900,000. U.S. President George Bush dismissed the new study, saying the approach had been "pretty well discredited", without explaining how. However, numerous statisticians supported the study.

Roberts is the lead author of the 2004 study, co-authored with four others, and was the lead investigator in the field. The study, titled "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey" was published in Lancet, a prestigious peer-reviewed journal. The study was released just one week before the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections. See Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq for a detailed discussion.

Roberts campaigned for office in 2006, running in the Democratic primary for the U.S. House of Representatives seat of the 24th Congressional District in Chenango County, NY. He withdrew from the running on May 17 and endorsed the remaining Democratic candidate in the race. Since then, some have discussed Les Roberts' possible candidacy for the state senate seat in his district.

In former work, Roberts was a Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee. In 1994 he worked in Rwanda for the World Health Organization, and performed a similar study to estimate the number of Rwandan refugees. In 2000, he performed a similar study which estimated 1.7 million deaths due to the war in the Congo. This study met with widespread acceptance when published, and resulted and was cited in a U.N. Security Council resolution that all foreign armies must leave Congo, a United Nations request for $140 million in aid, and a pledge by the US State Department for an additional $10 million in aid.

In 2007, Roberts is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Roberts did post-graduate fellowship work with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. He obtained a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1992, and has been a regular lecturer there, teaching courses in numerous semesters. He obtained a masters degree in public health from Tulane University in 1986, and an undergraduate degree at St. Lawrence University in 1983. He grew up in Onondaga, New York, and graduated from Westhill Senior High School in 1979.