The cover story in last week's New York Times magazine was titled The Women's War. Its subject was women who return from Iraq suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder; its theme was that both combat and sexual assault--incidence of which, the author suggests, is likely to be elevated in a combat zone--cause great and sometimes disabling stress for women.

The cover story, by Sara Corbett, was based mostly on interviews with five or six female Iraq veterans who are undergoing or have undergone treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Just one problem: it turns out that one of them never set foot in Iraq. From today's Corrections section:

The cover article in The Times Magazine on March 18 reported on women who served in Iraq, the sexual abuse that some of them endured and the struggle for all of them to reclaim their prewar lives. One of the servicewomen, Amorita Randall, a former naval construction worker, told The Times that she was in combat in Iraq in 2004 and that in one incident an explosive device blew up a Humvee she was riding in, killing the driver and leaving her with a brain injury. She also said she was raped twice while she was in the Navy.

On March 6, three days before the article went to press, a Times researcher contacted the Navy to confirm Ms. Randall’s account. There was preliminary back and forth but no detailed reply until hours before the deadline. At that time, a Navy spokesman confirmed to the researcher that Ms. Randall had won a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal with Marine Corps insignia, which was designated for those who served in a combat area, including Iraq, or in direct support of troops deployed in one. But the spokesman said there was no report of the Humvee incident or a record of Ms. Randall’s having suffered an injury in Iraq. The spokesman also said that Ms. Randall’s commander, who served in Iraq, remembered her but said that her unit was never involved in combat while it was in Iraq. Both of these statements from the Navy were included in the article. The article also reported that the Navy had no record of a sexual-assault report involving Ms. Randall.

After The Times researcher spoke with the Navy, the reporter called Ms. Randall to ask about the discrepancies. She stood by her account.

On March 12, three days after the article had gone to press, the Navy called The Times to say that it had found that Ms. Randall had never received imminent-danger pay or a combat-zone tax exemption, indicating that she was never in Iraq. Only part of her unit was sent there; Ms. Randall served with another part of it in Guam. The Navy also said that Ms. Randall was given the medal with the insignia because of a clerical error.

Based on the information that came to light after the article was printed, it is now clear that Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did. Since the article appeared, Ms. Randall herself has questioned another member of her unit, who told Ms. Randall that she was not deployed to Iraq. If The Times had learned these facts before publication, it would not have included Ms. Randall in the article.

As the correction states, the original article did note the discrepancy between Randall's account and the Navy's records. Oddly, though, Corbett didn't seem to think that whether Randall's account was accurate was very important:

According to the Navy, however, no after-action report exists to back up Randall's claims of combat exposure or injury. A Navy spokesman reports that her commander says that his unit was never involved in combat during her tour. And yet, while we were discussing the supposed I.E.D. attack, Randall appeared to recall it in exacting detail -- the smells, the sounds, the impact of the explosion. As she spoke, her body seemed to seize up; her speech became slurred as she slipped into a flashback. It was difficult to know what had traumatized Randall: whether she had in fact been in combat or whether she was reacting to some more generalized recollection of powerlessness.

Either way, the effects seemed to be crippling.

True, either way Randall is a very troubled young woman. But if you're writing an article about the effects of service in Iraq on women's mental health, it would seem that a basic starting point would be to make sure you're talking to women who have been to Iraq. The Randall episode is especially problematic, in that she is not the only woman quoted in the article whose story is inconsistent with her military records.

There is, though, an even more fundamental problem with Corbett's approach. Her material comes from interviewing women who are being treated for PTSD, and their stories are indeed sad. Indeed, their tone is so unvaryingly tragic that if you read the article, your first thought will be that the curmudgeons who argued, years ago, that women are unsuited for combat duty were right.

But what do interviews of women diagnosed with PTSD tell us about the much broader population of women who have served in the military? Not much, I suspect. Corbett's method reminds me of a study done in the late 1960s on the effects of marijuana use. It found that 100% of college students who smoked marijuana suffered from some kind of psychological problem. At the time, the study was widely reported. Its conclusion seemed obviously false to me, and I couldn't figure out how the study could be so far off the mark until I got to the last line of the news article: the study was based on a review of files in college psychiatric services. Sure enough, if the data set you start with is psychiatric files, you will find that 100% of marijuana smokers have some kind of psychological problem. Of course, you could say the same for any other demographic group: blue-eyed people, midgets, whatever.

While Corbett's article doesn't purport to be a scientific study, the same phenomenon appears to be at work. If the only people you talk to are ones who are being treated for PTSD, you will get the impression that military service is awfully traumatic. Of course, you would get the same impression if you interviewed male veterans who were being treated for PTSD. And you would get similarly sad stories from civilians who are being treated for similar disorders.

There is no doubt that the lives of the women Corbett interviewed are a mess. But why are they a mess? The fact that at least one of the handful of women on whom the story is based was never in Iraq at all highlights the fact that it will take a much more systematic approach to give us a fair picture of the effects of military service, both positive and negative, on the thousands of women who serve in today's armed forces.

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Posted by John at 08:37 AM  |    |