BBC, 3/26/07:
The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.
Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet. [...] But the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust". [...] Another expert agreed the method was "tried and tested".
Here's President Bush lying about the same:
"The methodology is pretty well discredited,"
More on the sound science behind the Johns Hopkins Iraq mortality studies here and here.