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Stanford Medicine: Garbage Studies Masquerading as Science
Related: ethics in medicine, gears of the machine, health, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus
re: Dr Scott Atlas
re: Dr. John Ionnadis
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD: How to understand scientific studies (in health and medicine)
re: Ioannidis: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.
This Bangladesh study is such low-grade “science” with so many flaws and statistical lies that it is a dumpster fire of scientific incompetence. It ought to be used as a case study how not to do scientific studies. Yet Stanford is promoting it as evidence that masks work.
It is not surprising—I have read the output of Stanford University research for years, and I have watched it become more and more woke and politicized whenever controversial subjects are involved.
Surgical masks reduce COVID-19 spread, large-scale study shows
A large, randomized trial led by researchers at Stanford Medicine and Yale University has found that wearing a surgical face mask over the mouth and nose is an effective way to reduce the occurrence of COVID-19 in community settings...
...“We now have evidence from a randomized, controlled trial that mask promotion increases the use of face coverings and prevents the spread of COVID-19,” said Stephen Luby, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford. “This is the gold standard for evaluating public health interventions. Importantly, this approach was designed be scalable in lower- and middle-income countries struggling to get or distribute vaccines against the virus.”
...
WIND: the “gold standard”? This study is full of methodological problems of many kinds. Its “randomization” is a joke, nor were there any real controls. It should be used as a case study of scientific incompetence. See the debunk, below.
How to Lie With Statistics and Bad Study Design, Mask Version
by Kevin Roche, 2021-09-02
This new study supposedly showing benefits of community masking has been touted for showing mask efficacy and pilloried by true scientists for its abysmal design and statistical methods...
First, note the bizarre organization that published the “study”. That is a head-scratcher. Couldn’t get Medrxiv to take it? Second, note the corresponding authors. They are not infectious disease researchers or epidemiologists. As far as I can tell they are economists. Now economists do a lot of good research, but you gotta believe there is an agenda at work here. Third, just look at the primary description of the results, look at carefully by age group. That is all I needed to see to know this is garbage. Apparently CV-19 is so smart that it can tell how old a person wearing a mask is and decide whether or not to infect them based on age. When you see that difference in effect by age group, you know some very serious confounding variable is at work. Fourth, look at the confidence intervals, always a dead give away about how good a study’s results are. Not just wide, but Pacific Ocean wide.
And now we get to the really fun part–the very selective cherrypicking of supposed results. Reporting of symptoms was almost indistinguishable in the groups. First of all, a very small number of the total villagers involved in the study were even reached. Out of those 7.62% in the intervention group and 8.62% in the control group reported symptoms. Statistically indistinguishable...
...My favorite is the fact that the intervention showed absolutely no impact on those under 50 years of age and only the most marginal effect on older groups. There is no possible explanation for this other than an extremely discerning virus, capable of intuiting the age of various mask and non-mask wearers...
...
WIND: I recommend reading, for starters, How to understand scientific studies (in health and medicine) and Ioannidis: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.
Stanford Medicine today is polluted with anti-science anti-reason “experts” who refuse to debate issues, but instead shovel out bad science to support the narrative. This is the groupthink trash-talking crowd who engaged in the ad-hominem attack on Dr Scott Atlas, while ignoring world-class experts like epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta, epidemiologist John Ionnadis and anyone with an objective viewpoint that doesn’t toe the line on the narrative about COVID.
Below, what makes this particularly “rich”, is that this is the same intellectual crooks in the medical establishment that refuse to engage in debate of the issues.
How misinformation, medical mistrust fuel vaccine hesitancy
Public trust in government agencies and health professionals; access to vaccines and treatments; and accurate, clear, nonjudgmental information about COVID-19 are key to counteracting misinformation about the disease.
...Not all health care workers on social media are reliable sources, however. “We have to have accountability for medical professionals who distribute harmful information,” said Vin Gupta, MD, a pulmonary critical care physician at the University of Washington...
WIND: no discussion of engaging alternative viewpoints. No discussion of natural immunity! This article serves propaganda purposes, avoiding serious discussion (or even mention) of why the distrust is there.
It apparently does not dawn on these morons that the source of the distrust is not misinformation about vaccines, but about end of science as we know it, in which dissenting views are canceled/suppressed, along with demonizing anyone who does not toe the line on the favored narrative.
