Follow the science

I meant to post on this David Strom article two weeks ago, but it got lost in the shuffle during my brief blogging hiatus. It resurfaced on InstaPundit this morning, so here it is. The Cochrane Review analysis, by the way, is what the CNN (!) host confronted Fauci with when the old fraud was back on the air touting masks even while conceding that there’s no evidence that they work.

A few months back a controversy burst onto the scene with the now infamous Cochrane Review analysis that demonstrated that masking is useless as a population-level non-pharmaceutical intervention to address the COVID pandemic. There simply is no evidence that masking reduces the burden of disease and plenty of evidence that they don’t in large populations.

When the review dropped it caused quite a stir for the most obvious of reasons: it popped a bubble that should never have been allowed to inflate. It has been well known for a century that whatever their virtues, masks simply do not work to stop the spread of respiratory viruses in large groups over any extended period of time. This was a consensus position–one that Anthony Fauci himself endorsed before COVID changed the messaging suddenly.

Cochrane Review is widely held as a gold standard for medical information, and its findings are based upon meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials done by researchers across the world. These reviews do not rely on one study but on tens or hundreds using different methods in different places, with the goal of sorting out the signal from the noise that will always be found in any particular study.

When the analysis dropped the world seemed to explode. To have Cochrane Review debunk the mask narrative was unacceptable, and like a ton of bricks, the criticism poured in.

The editor apparently panicked. A quick addendum was attached to the analysis suggesting that it was not dispositive–and that addendum has been used ever since to claim that the review was flawed or even retracted. That is not and never was the case, and it is clear that the editor simply buckled to criticism.

Paul Thacker has done a deep dive into what happened and why, and the story is dispiriting. A study that was based upon extensive analysis, peer-reviewed, and based on the best evidence available was undermined by an editor with no relevant experience in a matter of hours, for the simple reason that she was scared by criticism from news organizations such as the New York Times.

Cochrane’s bending the knee to the mask mob has created a crisis of confidence in the research world. Not only do medical professionals rely on Cochrane to be utterly dedicated to the evidence above all else, but the scientists involved in producing the research can’t have a politically-motivated editor simply wiping out their research based on a hasty political decision driven by an inquiry from a newspaper.

Many people have been led to believe that the Cochrane study has been “debunked” or “retracted,” but neither is the case. The sole purpose of the note attached to the study is to create the impression that it has been retracted while it has not. The research stands; the political impression is the opposite, as intended.

To give you an idea how slapdash the editor’s response was, consider this: Soares-Weiser got an email from the New York Times and hastily responded, undermining the scientists–without even making an attempt to speak with them. She implied that the study was wrong without even seeking comment from the people who did the study, on a subject with which she was utterly unfamiliar.

This is science in the modern world.

Related:Global warming “scientific” reporting is just as bad.

Patrick T. Brown, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and doctor of earth and climate sciences, admitted that he stretched and left out important pieces of the truth to make his article more appealing to editors at Nature and Science magazines. 

"And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain pre-approved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society," he wrote in The Free Press. 

Titled, I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published; Brown explained that climate change has become more about scaring people into the world is ending rather than "understanding the complexities of the world." 

Brown pointed out the recent wildfires that have destroyed livelihoods, such as the one in Maui. He wrote that scientists and the media were quick to blame climate change but argued that "obviously relevant factors"— such as poor forest management— were the cause of the fires yet never discussed.

…. The author noted that there are six times more PhDs earned in the U.S. each year than in the early 1960s, making it difficult for scientists to stand out and get recognized for their work. 

As a result, the audience gets skewed information. 

"In theory, scientific research should prize curiosity, dispassionate objectivity, and a commitment to uncovering the truth. Surely, those are the qualities that editors of scientific journals should value. In reality, the biases of the editors (and the reviewers they call upon to evaluate submissions) exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields. They select what gets published from a large pool of entries, and in doing so, they also shape how research is conducted more broadly. Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted," he wrote.