Professor Denis Rancourt has been banned from academic pre-print publishing site ResearchGate for publishing research evidence suggesting masks can cause harm to the wearer.
He announced the news on Twitter: “ResearchGate today has permanently locked my account, which I have had since 2015. Their reasons graphically show the nature of their attack against democracy, and their corruption of science. … By their obscene non-logic, a scientific review of science articles reporting on harms caused by face masks has a ‘potential to cause harm’. No criticism of the psychological device (face masks) is tolerated, if the said criticism shows potential to influence public policy.”
Prof Rancourt, whose paper reviewing research on the harms of masks had been viewed more than 200,000 times, tweeted screenshots of emails he had received from the website warning him of his breaches of their terms of service, one of which stated:
In our view, those reports, among other things, discouraged the use of face masks, which contradicts the public health advice and/or legal requirements of credible agencies and governments. We, therefore, concluded that under our policies the reports had potential to cause harm. Posting content that has potential to cause harm is a violation of our Terms of Service.
Dr Clare Craig of HART tweeted: “We are in full witch hunt mode now. Science – which by definition requires debate – cannot exist in this environment.”
ResearchGate, as a privately owned website, is fully within its rights to have whatever terms of service it wishes and refuse to host whatever content it wants. But that doesn’t mean its decisions aren’t harmful to scientific debate or don’t constitute misplaced censorship of evidence that is inconvenient to governments or supportive of unfashionable views. ResearchGate may be entitled, under its Terms of Service, to censor evidence that runs counter to the policies of Western governments, but that doesn’t make it good for advancing scientific understanding.
Prof Rancourt’s articles are still available here.
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Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Quite disgraceful. Why bother with research at all? Just parrot the government line.
The only slim comfort to be drawn from this is that it provides concrete evidence that the Covid narrative cannot stand up to scrutiny.
Proof positive for anyone with a brain and commensurate critical intelligence.
True, but don’t hold your breath waiting for this appalling behaviour to be highlighted by the BBC/SKY/etc.
Oh – of course not.
We are already into the MSM use of Phil the Greek’s death as a propaganda asset. We can’t even get any normal broadcasting as the Death-and-Country meme permeates all the airwaves to ludicrously absurd extent. Even 4 Extra offers no escape – and Radio 3 blubbers on with ‘tribute’ sequences to an extremely fortunate alms-receiver who – as far as I know – never had any connection of note to the devastated musical world.
What’s Phil got to do with Covid?
Quite a lot. More Syrup of Death to feed the mawkishly gullible, and keep ’em pliable.
Sorry to bang on – but it’s so egregious, engineered and obvious.
First thought on hearing the shocking, deeply unsettling news of a 99-year-old’s tragic and unexpected demise was “Oh gawd no – nothing on TV or radio for months”.
Allowing no escape while “the nation mourns” is dictatorial. Not even group-think.
The first thing you thought when you heard that a fellow human has died was that there will be nothing on the tv and radio for months. You need to take a long hard look at yourself! Also, your concern that there will be nothing on tv or radio for months implies that you have a sad empty life. I fill my time with worthwhile hobbies and activities and rarely watch tv.
Lucky for me I have other activities – doubtless less worthwhile than yours.
Maybe your worthwhile ones should be withheld whenever any fellow human dies to encourage respectful mourning and solemnity on your part.
Indeed. They’re probably drafting the script for yet another royal funeral (not Phil’s) before too long. That would distract them from real news etc for a while.
The scripts for royal funerals are planned years in advance.
Quick Wiki search of ResearchGate: “In November 2015 they acquired additional funding of $52.6 million from a range of investors including Goldman Sachs, Benchmark Capital, Wellcome Trust and Bill Gates…”
‘Something rotten in the state of Denmark’. It all just stinks! I do wonder how it’s all going to pan out long term (Great Reset not withstanding) as folk’s resultant lack of trust in any governing/authoritative body or individual will severely hamper advancement in thought or indeed paradigm shifts.
Indeed.
It will go downhill in those regards as and until the MMT money steadily runs out and the whole system and various cults collapse.
The question the is: will humanity have learned something and do and truly rebuild better?
I don’t hold my breath.
You should look at the Light paper to see many grassroots and community based networks and enterprises are starting, it is a wobbly era but remain positive as the human spirit of creativity and shared experience will prevail.
“as folk’s resultant lack of trust in any governing/authoritative body or individual …” etc.
Sorry, Sue – but what makes you think light will dawn?
I’ve spent years listening to lazy-minded individuals uttering copy-cat phrases about politicians : ‘They’re all the same …”; “I never vote because …”
Yet, when a really egregious example of corruption comes up (as a result of their lazy-mindedness) and the bollocks that they have subscribed to becomes a reality, they lap it up like a cat returning to its sick.
FFS – they voted for Mr Toad. He didn’t just appear as if by magic – a known lazy liar, egomaniac and all-round twat. It was no secret.
Most people just can’t be bothered to go against the narrative
The line between worship of a celebrity and a political figure is almost non existent.
Funny how the money trail always ends with the usual suspects
You’re right. But, funnily enough, that almost is the least of my concerns – because it is predictable and, actually, quite rational.
What I’m finding most hard to stomach is the cumulative effect of lesser sins – stupidity, ignorance, a desire to go along with the crowd etc. etc.
Yes I am completely unsurprised.
It all looks very much like the anti-low carb movement where professors and doctors were prosecuted. Annika Dahlqvist in Sweden presented evidence and was found not guilty.Professor Tim Noakes in South Africa presented evidence and was found not guilty. The dieticians demanded a retrial and he was found not guilty again. Dr Garry Fettke in Australia got tired of his day job which was cutting off the feet of diabetics and started recommending a low carb diet. He was struck off but later reinstated.
The key fact is that NONE of this made it into the MSM
The second key fact is that research finally made it into the mainstream literature but with provisos – one researcher was told “of course” he could have a grant for the low fat arm of his study, but IF he wanted a low carb arm he would have to fund it himself. Unlike vegans obviously. I think Wellcome Trust are Seventh Day Adventists who have huge influence behind the scenes
The way they’re racking up the billions, that wont go far
Time to cancel my ResearchGate account.
The Enlightenment era ended in March 2020.
LS published that ‘After 300 years…’ picture in the summer, then endorsed even by Nobel prize winner Michael Levitt.
Sadly, the people, and in particular the young, want it just that way, and this will last until the yet unborn become awakening and revolting adolescents, so at least another 30 years (see The 4th Turning).
I can’t eat as much as I need to puke.
I empathize with your need to puke at the stinking garbage that is the current scene.
Thanks for highlighting this. Denis Rancourt has been something of a hero ever since I saw the online debate on facemasks last summer in which his argument against enforced population-wide masking was cogent and assured.
I remember forwarding it to friends, only one of whom could be bothered to watch. Maybe its long length put them off; more likely their indifference to the prospect of spending the rest of their lives walking around as faceless automatons.
If anyone does care: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQyLFdoeUNk
I was very much at home with other aspects of Denis Rancourt’s philosophy too.
Thanks, that was a great debate, but I would prefer someone less of a hothead on the other side. Though pro mask people are generally quite aggressive (and in that sense Kyle was rather representative), surely not everyone is like that. With a calmer scientist the debate could be more constructive.
Indeed the masked always seem to be aggressive in defence of their adopted encumbrance, for which I would read defensive. They are acting abnormally because they’ve been told to act abnormally at risk of punishment or ultimately death, and when questioned are naturally going to be holding their fort.
Haven’t seen that debate for months but I remember realising that hot-under-his-too-tight-collar Kyle does win on a single issue regarding measurements of droplets or something. What he completely ignores, as do the likes of Ferguson and our governments ‘advisors’ are the myriads of other issues making a masked population too horrific to allow.
A student of Kyle is something I’d not wish to be.
There was a Plandemic which they should have followed, before they saw their ‘window of opportunity’, so much of what has followed has been disgraceful and harmful to the nation.
– I had no idea the site was funded by Bill Gates.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263980289_Bill_Gates_Funds_Open_Science_Site
You can pretty much guarantee he’s in there if something strange is going on. That article by Peter Hotez the other day got me digging and he was 2 degrees removed from that too.
Extract from fully referenced, published science document about health risks of wearing masks from US National Library Of Medicine
Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/
ConclusionThe existing scientific evidences challenge the safety and efficacy of wearing facemask as preventive intervention for COVID-19. The data suggest that both medical and non-medical facemasks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious disease such SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, supporting against the usage of facemasks. Wearing facemasks has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects. These include hypoxia, hypercapnia, shortness of breath, increased acidity and toxicity, activation of fear and stress response, rise in stress hormones, immunosuppression, fatigue, headaches, decline in cognitive performance, predisposition for viral and infectious illnesses, chronic stress, anxiety and depression. Long-term consequences of wearing facemask can cause health deterioration, developing and progression of chronic diseases and premature death. Governments, policy makers and health organizations should utilize prosper and scientific evidence-based approach with respect to wearing facemasks, when the latter is considered as preventive intervention for public health.
Curious, no mention anywhere of the way masks obscure vision and fog up elderly people’s glasses, causing potentially fatal falls, which may well be the largest adverse effect of all.
Absolutely. It’s an excuse I regularly rely on when challenged. But it has merit. And when the pompous man, (and it is always a man), challenges me saying he just gets on with it, I say, “Well you’re braver than me. I’m not going to hospital to catch Covid thank you very much”.
for me and us the adverse effects are just from seeing the zombies ,wish a scientist woudl write a paper about that part too maybe they have
and thank you to this brave scientist i will watch the you tube as long a s hasn’t been deleted by the the rulers yet
I truly am sorry. Those of us who have refused vaccinations have become used to this sort of free speech suppression and of having our comments deleted from the likes of The Guardian and Facebook. I hate seeing it happen to academics and Scientists. Because it’s one thing for it to be an ignorant old Handbag off the streets. It’s something completely different for it to be a respected and highly qualified person from the Scientific community.
Masks and their ineffectiveness seem such a silly thing to suppress free speech on. All one can conclude is that the wearing of masks is so damaging to human health, and is such a strong driver of disease proliferation (thus causing so much morbidity and mortality), that the only course of action for these early zealots is to forcibly damage everyone’s health to the point where there is no longer a true control group, avoiding legal recourse.
I saw a doctor somewhere this week explain to an anti-vaccine interviewer that Science is such a vast subject that one cannot have an effective or wide enough perspective to judge everything. So you need (a.) to rely on your peers to do their due diligence and (b.) have freedom of debate so that evolution can take place. I believe that these 2 things make doctors feel safe vaccinating their children.
The infiltration of philanthrocapitalism into medicine has become so deep that it is starting to have the effect of a malign entity, (almost a rogue state), on the very people it seeks to serve. And the problem with being a billionaire and having wielded wealth on such a scale for so long is that no one is going to tell you when you or your endeavours have crossed the line into triggering hugely damaging events. And globalisation means that those events are taking place everywhere. So you use wealth and privilege to keep in the path you believe to be the correct one, generating more wealth as you go along with which to retrospectively fix the damage you caused in your philanthropic efforts.
This is all just so sad, because the heroes of Science are completely unprepared for the scale of the problem, and indeed believe themselves to be incapable of the task of wresting control of the issue. (This is not the case because it needs courage, and humility; traits to which we can all aspire and which we can all emulate). These Scientists are also finding that the mainstream media, which previously served them and their careers so well, is colluding to suppress necessary dialogue, that must happen publicly because of the speed and irresponsibility with which “solutions” are being rolled out.
It’s incredibly hard to find you and your industry were part of the problem, (I speak from experience in a different industry). It takes special courage and humility to look at that, and be brave enough to do better once you know better.
I hope Researchgate reinstate his account. Once again I send immense gratitude to all at Lockdown Sceptics and the FSU for their brave defence of free speech.
Just saw this..
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/masks-early-pulmonary-toxicity-quebec-schools-daycares-1.5966387
In the Soviet Union the lie had to be upheld by permanent supression of the truth until eventually the soviet empire collapsed under the weight of its own lies and propaganda. The same will happen here only the longer the censorship goes on the more destructive and unforgiving will be the response when the truth is revealed.
Nah, it won’t. The complete capture of the media, social media, the internet etc make ‘truth’ whatever they want it to be. The odd person ( like some on here) might see through it, but they are easily ignored, sectioned, sanctioned, or just disappeared.
If this works, and I fear it it will, the majority of the human race ( which will rapidly decline in number) will remain enslaved in a soft prison for decades even centuries. Until the ‘elite’ at the time forget why it happened and by default let ‘the machine break’.
I don’t believe a prison planet based on lies is feasible. Eventually the lies become so big that society doesn’t even function on a basic level.
Agreed. We live in modern times with a very fast turnover of ‘news’ thanks to technology.
It’s clear we need legislation to stop sites with a certain level of usage or an important role from driving people out of the public square in arbitrary fashion and with no independent appeals process.
We do indeed. Maybe a class action type complaint, (to mix legal metaphors), to the PCC.
If you could prove loss of earnings from being censored then you might have a case in a civil setting.
Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
what happened to real science?
It got co-opted by money.
There is a profound naivety among politicians and the general public over the “science”. The value of academic individuals and departments is assessed by the number of publications ,which are in turn are quantified by their “impact factor”. The pandemic has seen over 100000 papers related to Covid-19 and money is thrown at departments who are seen as the experts and have self interest in continuing an established narrative.
Established concepts rapidly become established with poor initial scepticism eg metal on metal hips, gynaecological mesh which were supported by multiple publications before the devastating impact of their error was accepted.
Some 45 years ago I challenged the ritual in the operating theatre assessing the science basis of pre operative shaving and mask wearing sadly ; however behaviour once embedded becomes part of who we are – a superstitious ritual.
Yes the scientists are to blame, but so are the general public by being so willing to treat the ritual “Rules” as doctrine and sadly consider those who disagree with the basis of these rules as being “criminals”. or COVIDIOTS.
Politicians are particularly ill equipped to challenge science as many have classic,law and arts degrees which lead them lead star struck when “scientists’ and doctors speak in a language they don’t understand.
There is nothin new about this :
as – Nicolaus Copernicus 15c described when being condemned by having the audacity to describe the earth revolving around the sum and not vice versa
There may be babblers, wholly ignorant of mathematics, who dare to condemn my hypothesis, upon the authority of some part of the Bible twisted to suit their purpose. I value them not, and scorn their unfounded judgment.
There are many examples in science of where the “intuitively” obvious answer is incorrect. Intuition is a wonderful tool, but it’s only the first step in a process. With things like masks, lockdowns and surface transmission we appear to have mostly stopped at the intuitive level and decided that’s it, it’s “settled”.
The average human loses around half a litre of water in a day just through breathing. That equates to around 40ml every 2 hours. When you wear a mask for 2 hours do you think all of that water ends up in your mask? OK – you also have to factor in evaporative processes, but even so.
A more fun thing to do, if you vape, is to pop a fresh mask on and see what happens when you vape. You’ll see a huge cloud of vapour going round the sides, the top and the bottom. Sure, not so much goes directly forwards, as we’d expect, but a really surprising amount escapes our “effective” masks. The mask is certainly only “stopping” a very small fraction of the vapour.
And here’s where you have to think in 3D. Sure, the mask might stop forward projection but the air just rebounds off the mask and escapes through the sides. You have to ask yourself the question not how much does the mask stop from going forward, but how much does it hold and keep there?
Now there’s no doubt in my mind that masks will stop some viral particles and hold them in the mask. The “intuitive” argument then goes that if you stop/hold 10% of the viral particles, then you reduce infection by 10% and that’s worth doing. The problem here is the assumption of a linear effect. It might well be that in order to reduce infection by 10% we need masks to be 60% effective, for example. On the other hand, it might go the other way and be that a 10% effective mask leads to a 60% reduction in infections. This is why we do experiments – so that we can answer questions like these. We don’t simply stop with our “intuitive” guesswork.
Here’s where the RCT’s come in. A randomized control trial is a great way of removing biases when conducted correctly. I believe I’m right in saying that of the many RCT’s done on mask wearing (over several decades) not a single one has been able to find evidence that masks make a significant difference to infection rates. The evidence clearly points to the conclusion that, even though masks might stop some viral particles from entering the atmosphere, this is still not sufficient to confer any noticeable benefit to infection rates.
This is what the evidence tells us. The evidence in favour of masks, such as it is, is not coming from RCT’s but from observational studies that rely on association.
As for harms caused by mask – once again our “intuition” tells us that this must be a possibility. Again, however, it’s important we actually do experiments to test our intuition against observed reality. Unfortunately, I haven’t looked at any such studies. Why? Well simply because the evidence is so very weak for the effectiveness of masks in reducing infection. I haven’t felt I needed to go the extra step and look at the evidence to see if they cause harm. There is only so much time in one day!
I strongly suspect they do cause harm, however.
The other problem is that what works in an area of high viral load – such as a Covid hospital ICU ward – doesn’t apply in areas of low viral load.
This is the same as radiation. What we know from radiation comes from accidents and bombs, where the load was high. The ‘safety line’ is then extrapolated to zero from there. The problem is that there is a level of radiation where if you drop below it the net impact drops almost to zero – because our bodies evolved to correct natural levels of radiation damage.
We have the same with viral load. Below a certain level we can eliminate it all. And there is a reasonable hypothesis that the younger we are the better we are at eliminating it.
Thank you for highlighting this — It is sad to the point of pathetic that most of the people of our country are more interested in watching reality tv shows than they are in standing up for their very freedom..How can they accept, in fact be bullied into wearing face masks symbols of punishment and enslavement, that have no evidence of protecting you from a virus and indeed may do harm – Something is so wrong that people, without resistance continue to obey these unpleasant and unscientific totalitarian orders.