I was one of the three people who wrote the protocol for Cochrane Review A122, ‘Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses‘ in 2006, and I have worked on all five updates. I will try to summarise what is a very confusing situation.
There are two issues here:
- Cochrane editorial mission control throwing us under the bus because of ‘pressure’ (let’s call it gross editorial mismanagement). This happened twice: in 2020 (fourth update) and 2023 (fifth update).
- Cochrane editorial mission control’s infringement of four founding principles of what was then the Cochrane Collaboration (this also took place in 2020 and 2023) is still ongoing, as none of the offending pieces of work have been retracted.
These are linked but equally serious issues.
We have told the story in a series of Trust the Evidence posts dating back two years and will continue to do so as it is far from finished, and there’s lots more to come.
The latest post is ‘Follow the narrative, not the evidence‘, about Cochrane’s race to the bottom of the evidence quality pyramid during the wokery surrounding the Covid pandemic.
And Tuesday’s ‘After Throwing Scientists Under the Bus for a Media Smearing, Cochrane Backtracks on Mask Review Statement‘, reporting how editorial mismanagement made us targets for the lobbying mob.
To add to the saga the Editors posted an update on June 6th.
This latest update adds to the confusion, as the last Cochrane Editors’ statement is misleading and spun.
The term “engagement” belies the fact that the Editor-in-Chief refused to meet with all 12 co-authors, insisted on the involvement of a mediator interacting with a single author (nominated by all the authors), and has still not explained her conduct.
The text gives the impression that the text of the review, which was approved by the editorial mission control, has been explained by interacting with the many who commented (if they are real people). This introduces two false concepts. First, that science is democratic; it can be conducted by a show of hands. The ‘Ayes’ have it. Second, that there was something to correct in the text in the first place (though curiously only in the shop windows, abstract and plain-language summary).
The Cochrane editorial bumbling opened the door to the influence of activists and overnight experts, so it’s no wonder some of you are confused.
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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Sadly, monetary expenditure doesn’t matter when it comes to “saving the planet”. It’s more important to be seen to be “doing the right thing by the environment” regardless of the cost. OK, the population may be saddled with crippling taxes, OK, the economy might crash, OK, society might crumble under the pressure, but we’ll be able to hold our heads up high as a nation and say “We did our bit by reducing the world’s carbon emissions by 1%”. And then sit back and realise that all the pain it’s inflicted on us has had no effect on the climate after all.
Yep, you got it in one.
Cost per house? “We do not have an accurate cost per property to provide this information”
This is a lie, obviously. They must have paid invoices for equipment and installation. Ergo, the cost is grossly disproportionate to any alleged benefit.
Weasel words – ‘We don’t know accurately the cost per property because we know we can’t just add it all up and divide by eight because some properties had PV and some had thermal solar panels. Therefore, it’s technically true that we can’t give an accurate cost per property.’
The fact they’ve refused suggests they’ve spent more than £60,000 x 8 = £480,000. If not, they’d be patting each other on the back about the massive savings they’d made.
I hope the information commissioner does not back the refusal of the FOI request on the basis that revealing the costs would be too controversial.
Yes, they lie.
Or it was paid to a few councillors mates?
Milton Friedman’s 4th way of spending money illustrated perfectly. Spending other people’s money on other people means you are not interested in either price or quality. Government spending in a nutshell – just spend it.
172 years? Nonsense. It’ll only take 12 years (if energy prices increase at 50% per year).
Exactly the same as my council. The only eco-focused properties in the borough are those built by the taxpayers’ £££s. No intention to find out if it’s value for money.
Such standards are classed as “nice to have” where private housing is being proposed, despite the declaration of the climate crisis. Hypocrisy writ large.
It isn’t supposed to be monitored they make the momey upfront because the agenda is purpose built to funnel money that way to the appropriate parties. They did well out of it. Never mind that it is fading now they are pulling money out and making money on the way down just look at electric cars.
This is par for the Net Zero course. Net Zero was waved through parliament with no discussion of cost/benefit. There was no debate and no vote. The Political Class have imposed this on us all under the false pretences of a climate crisis in order to comply with the UN’s Sustainable Development goals. Our governments are simply local administrators implementing globalist mandates, and taking their instructions from the UN/WEF. We are simply an inconvenience to them and any concerns we have are brushed aside.
All dead but we pay anyway. Can you even conceive of a way that we would get the lost money back from the last forty years. The best we can do is stop it and never allow it to happen again.
I can conceive that if they re-introduced gladiatoral combat, with the Uniparty clowns who gave us all this crap and the eco-profiteers who paid them, scrapping with hungry tigers and lions, the ticket sales would make a very big contribution to the lost money.
And hugely enhance public jollity.
I think we have to be a bit more aggressive in our response to this sort of obfuscation. When people complete these schemes, and refuse to reveal their results, we should be saying, very loudly indeed, that the only possible reason is that they have failed. And asking not what the results really were, but why they refuse to admit failure.
With Socialists it’s money no object so long as it’s not their own.