We’ve Asked Science To Retract the Bangladesh Mask Study
By Steve Kirsch
The key study relied upon by the CDC and IDSA to justify mass mask wearing worldwide is wrong. We’ve asked the journal to retract the study. If they don’t, we’ll go after the journal.
People think masks work, even though they don’t
Even after the Federal transportation mask mandate was rescinded, judging by the behavior I observed in multiple airports, it appears that somewhere around half the public still thinks that masks work.
The mask study in Finland showed if there is an effect, it’s negative
The best science shows that, if anything, the masks are more likely to be harmful than helpful; see this excellent video by UCSF Professor Vinay Prasad on the mask study done in Finland.
The Bangladesh study was widely hailed by experts as the definitive study that “proved” masks work
One of the key reasons that people think masks work is the Bangladesh study that was done by Stanford and Yale and was relied upon by both the CDC and IDSA. In fact, it’s the only randomized study that we are aware of that claims masks work.
The other randomized trial, the one done in Denmark, was deliberately re-written to suggest masks work because the medical journals wouldn’t publish a negative study since it was counter-narrative. The BMJ courageously documented the scientific misconduct by the medical journals.
What if the Bangladesh study proved nothing?
So if we can show that the Bangladesh mask study actually shows that masks DO NOT WORK and we can get the paper retracted, then we’ve made an incredible difference. We can:
- Force the medical community to admit that it has some very serious systemic issues that need to be addressed regarding scientific integrity.
- Destroy the credibility of the CDC to give even the simplest medical advice. Drugs are very complex. Masks are simple. But the CDC can’t even get something simple like masks right. It follows that it doesn’t have a prayer to get something more complex like vaccines right.
- Destroy the credibility of all the medical experts who relied on the study (pretty much everyone in the medical community). Not a single mainstream academic spoke out that the study showed nothing. They all screwed up.
- Show that the medical community is utterly incapable of policing itself. This study wasn’t rocket science. It’s basic statistics. Why is a British mathematician easily destroying this study while nobody in the US medical community speaks out at all. And even when the “misinformation spreaders” were saying “masks don’t work” the medical community still ignored looking at the issue. What does it take to get their attention?
- Destroy the credibility of the press for not doing their homework in talking to us (we’ve said from the beginning that masks can’t work)
- Show the world that they should stop using masks, especially on kids and in schools.
- Reduce pollution and trash from all the unnecessary masks that are being made
- Show the entire world they were manipulated into adopting an intervention which at best did nothing and more than likely helped increase infection. Once they realize they were fooled on masks, it opens up the possibility that they might also have been fooled by the COVID vaccines. And once they realize they were misled by the COVID vaccines, they become open to the possibility that they were misled on other vaccines as well. They then start to realize that there was a reason for the liability protection request of the drug companies: it is because they knew their products were unsafe.
- Demonstrate that, if we are given an opportunity to challenge the authorities, the “misinformation spreaders” always win.
- Put an end to self-appointed “mask police” (these are people who come up to you and demand to know “where is your mask?”)
The Bangladesh mask study actually didn’t prove anything
We’ve shown that there is nothing shown by the Bangladesh study previously. We challenged the first author to defend his study and he failed. Badly.
But the nail in the coffin is this new analysis by UK Professor Norman Fenton.
Yale Professor of Economics Jason Abaluck, the first author of the Bangladesh study, reviewed Fenton’s analysis. Abaluck self-determined that Fenton was incompetent so he could justify no longer talking to him.
Abaluck also noted that the reason they used cluster randomization in the trial is because they weren’t testing whether masks worked on individuals, but whether community masking as a health policy would make a difference: would people comply and would it subsequently reduce the rate of infection. This subtle distinction is irrelevant. At the end of the day, Abaluck’s cluster-randomization study showed that there wasn’t any difference in infection rate between the groups.
In fact, Fenton showed that Abaluck’s study was roughly equivalent to this experiment:
To give a feel for just how ‘insignificant’ the 52% figure is – if you wanted to use it to conclude that the seropositivity rate is lower in people receiving the mask intervention than those who do not – then this would be much like flipping 201 coins, observing 101 ‘heads’ and 100 ‘tails’ and concluding that all coins are more likely to land on heads than tails.
Fenton asked Science to retract or correct the paper
On May 2, 2022, Fenton wrote to the journal that published the paper (Science) and requested that the Bangladesh mask study be either corrected or retracted since it incorrectly states that masks work.
Here is the conclusion of the paper:
A randomized-trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that the intervention increased mask usage and reduced symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, demonstrating that promoting community mask-wearing can improve public health.
The only thing that is true is that the intervention to ask people to wear masks did, in fact, increase mask wearing. The rest is wrong and needs to be retracted.
What happens next is the true test of character
Everyone makes mistakes. But what they do about the mistake after it is clearly pointed out is telling.
We will soon see how trustable the editors of Science are. If the journal does nothing, it will implicate the journal. Which means you shouldn’t trust it in the future.
Secondly, the medical community (and mainstream media) should now quickly assess whether they made a mistake in promoting a false narrative. If they publicly fail to admit their mistake at this point, they are even more deplorable than I imagined.
What do you think will happen?
