“Masks don’t work”? Or “Cochrane methodology applied in the absence of common sense will mislead”? Looks like it’s the latter. www.scientificamerican.com/article/what... - ThreadSky

trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social • 498 days ago

“Masks don’t work”? Or “Cochrane methodology applied in the absence of common sense will mislead”? Looks like it’s the latter.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-went-wrong-with-a-highly-publicized-covid-mask-analysis/

Comments

gofigurenancy.bsky.social•498 days ago

Great article. explains a lot. but for real, do you think Ms. Soares-Weiser & her colleagues sat around a table somewhere, before this article was published, and debated the possible interpretations (including mis & dys)? & were they ok with lead author's (seemingly known) bias/position on masking?

daveprattdpt.bsky.social•86 days ago

Great article. RCTs are the gold standard but do not fully capture the complexity of reality. We cannot randomize certain factors, such as earthquakes or birth order, and we should not randomize others, like exposure to trauma. This is why science requires multiple types of evidence.

astill73.bsky.social•86 days ago

📌

cris143.bsky.social•86 days ago

Thank you Trish…. It’s really important to publish articles like this, and to disseminate them. Vaccine denial, Mask denial…. And on and on is spread from misinterpretation driving misinformation!!!

franzhefter.bsky.social•498 days ago

With the methodology Cochrane used you could never proof that Seatbelts nor Helmets work.

franzhefter.bsky.social•498 days ago

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

johnaking.bsky.social•86 days ago

This is an excellent article, systematic reviews can easily be biased by tweaking their quality thresholds/weighting. Cass being a recent example.

drcj.bsky.social•495 days ago

Thanks for this. It's a conversation we've had a few times in our house.
Such a disappointing review from Cochrane, given the obvious reaction by media, and the not exactly neutral lead author. But what can you do when it's ideological bias, rather than financial "conflict of interest"?

oldhoundderby.bsky.social•498 days ago

If masks don’t work, I’d just like to ask the puritanical EBM crowd if they’d like to volunteer to take care of active TB patients or COVID without an N95 mask. Let’s see how many sign up. 😏

sdinpraxis.bsky.social•496 days ago

Wait! Jefferson is associated with Oxford's Centre for Evidence Based Medicine? Where Heneghan presides? How much damage has the CEBM inflicted during covid?!?

thoseos.bsky.social•497 days ago

And it's still doing damage. I ran into someone a couple of days ago who tried to back up his "Masks don't work" statement by referencing the Cochrane review.

louiselocock.bsky.social•498 days ago

"Rigor over reality". Yep.

derekbrauders.bsky.social•498 days ago

This is a damn good read! A ridiculous situation where "we don't have sufficient information to make an informed decision yet" becomes " it obviously doesn't work because we don't have the data".
And this was published? By Cochrane? Not a good look at all, for any of them.

roadmeetsfeet.bsky.social•498 days ago

Set Cochrane back inestimably. Defiled the process & rightfully has resulted in a lack of confidence in Cochrane publications.

louiselocock.bsky.social•498 days ago

Also set back the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. They seem to have made some astonishingly bad interventions during COVID.

sdinpraxis.bsky.social•496 days ago

CEBM is all down to Heneghan, backed up by Gupta and the whole panoply of the "let it rip" crowd at either side of the Atlantic.

robb.doering.ai•86 days ago

I mean, they're right tho - it was the bad faith right-wing "science" journalists that spun it into "masks don't work". The original finding was "we're not certain N95 masks work based on the available data", which seems shocking but that's science for ya.

robb.doering.ai•86 days ago

I guess there's an argument for lying/suppressing results when public health is on the line and bad actors will twist them, but that's at the very least controversial. It certainly has the possibility for backfiring to a large degree, convincing people there's a coverup of some kind

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