Two scientists with Pittsburgh ties are giving math a grim but cathartic twist by estimating body counts of global human rights abuses.
Patrick Ball, a Squirrel Hill native, and his colleague Jana Asher, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, recently estimated the number of people killed or missing during Peru's 20 years of civil war at double the previously reported total.
They also analyzed death and migration patterns of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Their research was used in the war crimes trial of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
"Typically, after there's been a lot of human rights violations in a country, there are a lot of angry people," said Asher, 32, of Washington, D.C. "When we say 69,280 people were killed in Peru, that puts it in perspective. It helps people move forward."
Asher, a Philadelphia native with a master's degree in statistics from CMU, began working with Ball two years ago, and he later invited her to join him in studying Kosovo.
Ball, 38, also of Washington, D.C., wasn't always so serious. In the 1980s, he used to cut classes at Taylor-Allderdice High School to eat pizza at Mineo's.
He obtained a bachelor's degree from Columbia University and a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan, all in sociology. He is deputy director of the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ball said his seven-member team is the only one working with truth and reconciliation commissions -- panels set up to report on abuses relating to a particular time, country and conflict. There are 24 such commissions in the world.
Ball and Asher use a technique called "multiple system estimation" that analyzes the overlap of separately collected lists.
They liken the approach to counting fish in a lake. Someone throws out a net and tags the fish caught. Another group casts a net, and then another. The statisticians compare how many fish were caught before and how many are new. This gives them an idea of how many fish were not caught by any of the casts and the total number in the lake.
In Kosovo, they were asked who was responsible for most of the killing of ethnic Albanians -- NATO bombings, Albanian guerrillas or Serbs acting under Milosevic?
They found that it was neither NATO nor the guerrillas. A key piece of data was a unilateral cease-fire announced by the Serbian government on April 6, 1999, to honor Orthodox Easter. The migration and killing almost stopped for four days, Ball said, although the guerrillas doubled their activities and NATO tripled its bombing.
"That doesn't prove the Serb forces were responsible ... but it is a very interesting coincidence," Ball said.
He testified last year and in May during Milosevic's trial at The Hague. He won't know if his testimony affected the judges' reasoning until they render a decision -- possibly in a couple years.
In Peru, Ball and Asher were asked to compute the total number of deaths and who was responsible.
Their estimate was more than twice the 24,000 victims previously estimated. In addition, they attributed 46 percent of the killings to Maoist guerillas known as the Shining Path, 30 percent to government forces and the rest to other rebels or armed peasant groups.
"Thousands and thousands of Peruvians were being killed," Ball said. "But they were being killed up in the mountains far from view of the capital."
As a result, the truth commission criticized the political elites for not responding appropriately to the uprising.
"Our number has opened up a big can of worms," Ball said. "What we're saying is you don't know what's going on in your own country."
"If somebody who's been accused of war crimes and is responsible for those crimes goes to jail, then I made a positive impact," Asher said.
