Support for PRIO researchers’ data

The data set on battle deaths developed by Nils Petter and Bethany (Lacina) has been the centre of attention in a heated debate. Now, the two have received heavy weight support in a newly published article in the Journal of Conflict Resolution by Michael Spagat, Andrew Mack, Tara Cooper and Joakim Kreutz. The critics of the PRIO data claims that they underestimate battle deaths by as much as two thirds, but, claims Spagat and associates, ‘their comparison fails to compare like with like’. Likewise, the onslaught on our colleagues’ claim that deaths in war is on a steady decline gets short shrift in the article. Read for yourself. This is strong professional and moral support for Nils Petter and Bethany, and ultimately for PRIO’s data work.

PRIO’s data efforts were also awarded by significant financial support recently, as the Research Council of Norway decided to award some 8 million from their INFRASTRUKTUR. The project - Advanced Conflict Data Catalogue: Defining an Industry-Standard for Data on Armed Conflict – was one of very few outside of the hard sciences to be awarded a grant, and therefore represents a major policy breakthrough in itself, gaining recognition that hosting and maintaining databases is in a long-term infrastructural investment. To PRIO, this is also terribly important in that it secures funding for databases that are at the core of the CSCW beyond the centre’s existence. Many have worked hard to secure this grant, but Håvard S deserves special mention, having entrepreneurially identified this great opportunity and ran with it.