A truth commission did not tell the truth: A rejoinder to Manrique

Rendon (2019) showed that the indirect estimation of total killings in the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission introduced a distortion. Two of the original analysts, Manrique-Vallier and Ball (2019), provide an indirect defense of their work using new data, and argue that this supports their unprecedented indirect method over the direct estimator. In this rejoinder I show that their new figure of 17,687 killings by the Shining Path is closer to the direct estimate of 18,341 than to their indirect estimate of 31,331 killings. I also show that the indirect method systematically produces impossible negative predicted killings and overfits massively. I reiterate my conclusion that their indirect estimates are unreliable and should be retracted