16 Comments

Yep, reading that yellow highlighted montage there got my blood boiling.

I can just imagine what it's like to talk to these people. Notice how many of those are basically positive or negative appeals to authority and NOTHING else? "You're not a doctor / Let the doctors decide this."

These are the people who would gladly abrogate moral responsibility for murdering me if someone was willing to sign the waiver for them.

Expand full comment

It is depressing that even this basic understanding- masks don't work - isn't ubiquitous. They won't stop trying to confuse those easily confused.

Expand full comment

Talking about scientific studies and their publishing this site is my favourite for scientific research papers:

https://improbable.com/ig/winners/

Some brilliant research carried out over the years when you root through them such as:

the internal pressure of penguins

how much effort needed to drag a sheep up a slope

exponential decay of beer froth

a politican’s obesity as an indicator of political corruption

And lots more over the years.

Expand full comment

A review of the "paper" you may enjoy:

https://pubpeer.com/publications/BF3C584896308E94C007109E793460?utm_source=Chrome&utm_medium=BrowserExtension&utm_campaign=Chrome

A commentator rips the paper to shreds:

This preprint meta-analysis is aimed at evaluating an important topic (the efficacy of mask wearing in preventing sars-cov-2 infection), unfortunately the methodological deficiencies and deviations from accepted minimum standards of reporting and conduct render it valueless in addressing the topic.

Firstly the manuscript does not give a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the text and PRISMA flowchart directly contradict. The authors exclude almost all of the 61 papers they state "meet entry[sic] criteria" based on some criterion that is not specified. The authors claim to have limited the search to studies published on or before July 2020 (for unclear reasons) however have included some publications after this date. The studies included are of such low qualities and unhelpful designs as to be non-contributory.

Despite the claimed triple extraction of data, the putatively extracted data is not robust. e.g. Caruhel et al at reference 22 is claimed to report a case series of "11 people on a charter flight" but is reported as 0 infections from 20 participants, so I looked up the paper. Examining the paper it is actually a letter describing a tracheostomy technique while in military gas masks. While it includes interesting photos, it doesn't actually report any data that could possibly be included in a quantitative synthesis.

The statistical values given are largely non-sensical. p values are given for individual proportions rather than for comparisons of proportions. e.g. the headline result is that 8% of those in masks were infected vs 49% not in masks. Curiously SEPARATE p values are given 2*10^-3 for the former and 0.94 for the latter. Obviously there is a fairly fundamental misunderstanding of NHST from the authors here but as the test used is not specified anywhere in the paper it's a bit difficult to unpick exactly what that misunderstanding is. I did look in the method and that was not helpful, the authors do claim to have used "t tests" (not further specified) in one part but as the paper collects only binary outcomes that frankly raises more questions than it answers.

The paper does not actually describe any accepted meta-analysis technique, it is not even clear whether a fixed or random effects model was used, there are no forest plots, and data is not presented in any acceptable form.

In short this attempted meta-analysis excludes almost every major study on the topic it is studying, includes a bizarre selection of papers sometimes without any possible data to extract, makes non-sensical statistical claims (p values for proportion in a single group, t-tests despite only binary outcomes etc), mainly from unspecified statistical tests, and fails to meet minimum standards for analysis or reporting.

This preprint does not contribute to answering the question it attempts to examine.

Expand full comment

That bit about equal in worth and dignity has never made much sense, but it's nice to see people making an effort in proving how simply wrong the notion is.

Or as I like to put it: the key word in the phrase "of average intelligence" is "average", not "intelligence".

I'm sorry, it's just reading stuff like the quoted posts brings out my inner arrogance to the point of "put them up against a wall and shoot'em"-levels.

Sometimes it is very easy to understand why the Schwabs and Gates' and similar think and speak the way they do about us, calling us deplorable and unwashed and useless eaters.

Expand full comment

I have actually received one of that type of reply from someone I know, about masking. He said, and I won't bother to quote, "there are lots of studies on both sides of the masking debate." Rather than tell him off or berate him, I responded with some variant of, "I have no idea what type of study you need to see." Maybe I should have been more stern with him, but that cadre of responses indicates that many people--many of them of good faith and sincerity--believe the masking bullshit. The mind reels...

Expand full comment

It’s become common to hear intellectually lazy dunces who are trying to sound scientifically literate conflate “preprint” with “misinformation” and peer review with “Bible truth.” Can’t convince them that other people possess the ability to read and reason when they do not.

Expand full comment
Aug 6, 2022·edited Aug 6, 2022

The best way to inoculate yourself against the sort of imbecilic outrage is to keep a 2500-year-old apophthegm at the very front if your mind:

ΟΙ ΠΛΕΙΣΤΟΙ ΑΝΤΗΡΟΠΟΙ ΚΑΚΟΙ - Bias of Priene, ca. 500BCE.

Translated trollingly: MOST PEOPLE ARE SHIT.

Most people were bewildered by Grade 9 maths. Most people can't extract meaning from a piece of text of any complexity (PIAAC studies bear this out). Most people (~95%) are woefully shit-awful at shape-rotation. 99% don't understand why "Switch" is the dominant strategy in the Monty Hall game.

And they've all been conditioned to get a pat on the head when they signal agreement with the political class. They're dumber than dogs, and I would VASTLY prefer that America's Mengele - PuppyKiller Fauci - experiments on them rather than a fresh batch of innocent beagles.

Let them all die; there is no point wasting effort and energy on people who are too stupid to merit saving. Humanity would be better of with a 95% reduction in imbeciles.

Expand full comment

On simple letter change....perfection!!

Expand full comment