In my recent post, I gave reasons why I am very wary of talking to the media. I thank those who sent messages of support. While I do not give two Hancocks for what the establishment thinks, I do care about what our supporters think and am deeply grateful for the responses.
So I have more for you. We, the co-authors of the Cochrane review on “physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses” (such as masks and PPE), known for short as A122, have received several requests described in my previous post: “Can I please check the main facts and, by the way, tell me what your review says because I cannot be bothered to do my job” type of messages.
However, we recently got another query which underlines the points made in the previous posts. This request comes from a very powerful press syndicate:
I’m reaching out because I’ve been seeing some posts [links redacted by TJ] spreading widely on social media that seem to be misrepresenting the conclusions of your recently published study on physical interventions and respiratory viruses.
Do you think it is a misrepresentation to claim (as the tweets I link to above do) that your study definitively proves that masks don’t work in preventing the spread of viruses such as COVID-19 and the flu? If so, I’d be interested in debunking these claims to set the record straight and would love to speak with you more about the study.
The disturbing aspect of this request is as follows: the stringer is making contact with one of us. After exchanging pleasantries, he or she will ask a few superfluous questions.
We have an abstract, a plain language summary, Trust the Evidence posts and a podcast and Carl and I have written a Spectator piece covering the review. If you are a real masochist, you can read all the 300-plus pages of the review. I even gave the interview I mentioned previously, but I am not planning any more outings. So there is nothing to explain or fact-check. But the stringer is not really interested in checking facts. What they want to do is to write truthfully that they have spoken to one of us and then put the spin required in the release to ensure the ‘misinterpretation’ of twitterati is set straight. ‘Debunking’ is the term used, and it will be actioned if the stringer thinks the twitterati have ‘misinterpreted’ our findings.
I am not on Twitter, never have been and never will be. I have no idea what these folk have written (I redacted the links without opening them). What disturbs me, though, is the idea of ‘debunking’ or ‘normalisation’ of the information flow.
We have done the tough work over two decades, reporting results separately from our interpretation, as in all Cochrane reviews. The studies’ results are the results reported by the authors of the single studies included in the reviews. Our interpretation is one you can – and should if you want – challenge.
However, successfully challenging our interpretation requires hard work, elbow grease, graft, focus and application. So picking up the phone and speaking to someone, then deciding how to ‘debunk’ or normalise the message, is so much easier.
The reach of this particular press syndicate is global and powerful. I wonder why the stringer wanted to “debunk” the interpretation of the twitterati mentioned in the text. To ensure ‘truth’ triumphed? Or to ensure no more waves in the official narratives were made by a bunch of academics or Twitter dwellers?
We have met this kind of issue before: after we showed the published record of clinical trials for the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu was ghost-written, highly selected and spun, and no one outside the manufacturer had seen the raw data. Furthermore, the claims made by the manufacturer and its supporters were not based on solid evidence, and the drug’s performance was “modest”, according to the FDA. When the facts were made clear to the public and even the Council of Europe, the manufacturers hired the clean-up squad (anyone watched the movie John Wick?). Using observational data and two layers of go-between funders to provide a veneer of independence, they were able to reassure governments and the public that Tamiflu stockpiles really were a good idea, ready to roll against the next imminent influenza pandemic.
Governments don’t want ‘confusion’ over the decisions and policies they enact, especially over funds that have been already spent and when they are still spending a lot of your money. ‘Normalisation’ is needed to sort out the ‘confusion’ and to prevent the truth from getting out.
Governments really have your interest at heart, working day and night to protect you. It reminds me of Benito Mussolini, who left the lights on in his study in Palazzo Venezia so that passers by at two in the morning were reassured that the Duke worked all hours for the sake of Italy.
Be seeing you, Benito.
Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome and lead author of the latest update to the Cochrane review of physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. This article was first published on Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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How naive I was until not so long, believing that the presentation of facts and evidence in a competent way was all that was needed to establish truth and debunk lies.
The ridiculous trial of Galileo was a story from the past, of how backward we were and how far we had come.
It turns out there is a powerful organisation and infrastructure in place which all but guarantees that facts and evidence alone are not enough to challenge official dogma and lies.
The real story about Galileo was not a dispute of the facts, because the Church’s own scientists knew Galileo was correct.
But the Church presented itself as God’s representative on Earth, so the Church’s words and directions were those if God.
The Church had always preached that the Sun revolved round a flat Earth. If they agreed with Galileo then either God was wrong, or they did not represent God on Earth. Since most would never believe God could be wrong, they would doubt the Church which would lose its authority and power.
It never was or is about facts, it’s about maintaining authority, power and control. Also why the facts about ‘climate change’ don’t matter.
Absolute nonsense. The Church did not preach a flat earth. The spherical nature of the earth had been known since ancient times and was widely accepted in the Middle Ages by most educated people, Thomas Aquinas mentions it in his Summa Theologica as an example of a well established scientific fact.
The Church initially supported the Ptolemaic system which had the sun and planets revolving around a spherical stationary earth. When Galileo’s discovery of the transit of Venus made that system untenable most astronomers, whether affiliated to the Church or not, adopted compromise models such as that of Tycho Braye, where some or all of the other planets revolved around the sun, which itself revolved around a stationary earth.
And they adopted such systems for valid scientific reasons. The evidence available at the time (notably the complete absence of observed stellar parallax) was strongly against any model of the universe in which the earth was not fixed. Galileo, despite his undeniable scientific achievements, was something of a fanatic in his support of the Copernican model, advocating it with a fervour that was not justified by the available evidence.
The Copernican model was not even strictly heliocentric. It had the sun moving in its own orbit around the empty centre of the solar system. It was frankly an ugly beast, even more than the Ptolemaic model. And of course it was wrong, as strictly speaking was Galileo. The correct model of the solar system was the elliptical heliocentric system of Johannes Kepler in which the earth and other planets moved in elliptical orbits with the sun at one of the foci. Galileo apparently knew of Kepler’s work but seems to have paid little attention to it.
It’s one of the ironies of history that Galileo is regarded as a champion of scientific rationalism, heroically fighting against the ignorance of blind faith, when the truth is actually closer to the other way round.
LOL……case proven I would say…in relation to having a debate, or at least a question about whether someone’s point can be challenged with different evidence…
Thank you JXB and David for your comments, you have made me want to go and take a look at this myself….which is how it should work, and is a good thing…?
There is no certainties in science just a certainty of the uncertain.
If a “fact checker” cannot check the facts of a story through his own research and diligence then he is not really a fact checker. As Dr Tom Jefferson points out:
“We have done the tough work over two decades…”
“Our interpretation is one you can – and should if you want – challenge.”
However, to challenge effectively requires a degree of knowledge at least on a par with the author’s and these thicko second-rate hacks are a long way from such intelligence levels even if they had the work ethic required to complete the necessary research.
Fact checkers really are the lowest of the low, riding on the coat-tails of others for forty pieces of silver. Scum.
So well done Dr Tom Jefferson and I wholeheartedly agree with your stance.
Which is why instead of challenging the facts by setting out their own contradicting evidence, they attack the person with slurs, accusations and abstractions.
Exactly.
When you attack the person rather than the facts you have lost the argument
The whole concept of some definitive “fact checking service” seems to have arrived along with the death of free speech and the rise of censorship. I have no recollection of seeing such things in my youth – people simply voiced differing opinions and cited whatever evidence they could muster to support their position. The notion that where there’s a dispute about who is “right” can be resolved by a “fact checker” is utter bullshit.
It’s not about facts it’s about the unbridled rage and hatred that occurs when the mass formation is challenged.
Dr Jefferson gets my vote, the difficulty we all have is that turning a 300 page report into a single phrase means you have to have a good grasp of the problem, the research and the conclusion whereas the majority of modern commentators just want to be able to reinforce their particular audience’s prejudices.
I trust Dr Jefferson to do this, I don’t trust the commentators. Simple as that.
As a basic principle, never engage with somebody who is ‘reaching out to you’ (rather than contacting or writing to you), they are submerged in the lingo of Clown World and have limited intellect.
Fact checkers should be looking to find out what the facts are and report them impartially. If someone sets out to confirm a pre-judged outcome, and perhaps even ignores evidence that doesn’t confirm their intended outcome, that isn’t fact checking, it’s propaganda.
In the good old days, peer review was all the fact checking that was needed.
It was known as peer review because the people who did the checking were of equivalent status to the author(s) of the original paper. These were the people who were deemed to have the requisite skill and specialist knowledge to fully evaluate the work.
Whereas fact checkers are qualified how?
The quoted correspondence reads exactly like every other fact checker letter I’ve ever seen quoted. They clearly write according to a script.
The Daily Telegraph published an article, “Why fake news travels fast” in its Saturday 4/2 colour supplement. It condescendingly describes the gullibility (my word) of people who believe manipulated news. The techniques are Discrediting, Emotion, Polarisation, Impersonation, Conspiracy Theories, and Online Trolling. A perfect description of what the ruling elite has done to the public over the last two or three years. Except this is a description of how Conspiracy Theorists operate. People are working at Cambridge, the Cabinet Office and the WHO to develop computer games to help people spot fake news (Bad News and Go Viral!). There is particular emphasis on controlling the thoughts and opinions of young people. People who do not believe the official government line are labelled “hardcore deniers” and have to be deprogrammed. The expert sighs and says this takes a long time to do – “you just have to be patient”.
I am in no doubt that the new WHO Constitution will regard “hardcore deniers” as suffering from mental health issues and in need of sectioning or treatment. “Young people are the future citizens and leaders of the country; the point is not to tell them what to believe but to inoculate them against these techniques” (listed above). All the language is continually analogous to immunization.
I highly recommend people read this article if they want to know how fact-checkers and experts in “cognitive anti-bodies” are claiming a monopoly on their version of the truth.
https://brownstone.org/articles/studies-and-articles-on-mask-ineffectiveness-and-harms/
“More than 170 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and HarmsBY
PAUL ELIAS ALEXANDER DECEMBER 20, 2021″