Besides the people who conducted the trial, do you have an issue with the study's methodology and math?
I will say the people and funding are the biggest red flags. A COVID truther and anti-mask group isn’t going to fund a study only to have it conclude that it’s safe for kids to mask up.
Alas even if I didn’t know where anyone involved stood on COVID and masks, it would raise a red flag to me that an alternative-medicine practicing gynecologist and an “alternative medicine” doctor/psychologist are two of the three leading doctors on this study.
You know what the first guy does to treat hyperthermia (that is a high temperature)? Puts patients in pajamas in a cabin with walls covered in reflective foil with a ceiling that shoots out infrared rays. Then when that’s done he’ll put a heat pack on your head, yes a heat pack to treat hyperthermia.
That second guy isn’t even an MD but is the top credited author for a medical study, oh and he also believes psychics are real.
These two guys probably pay for Facebook ads promoting healing crystals.
To be fair, I don’t understand much of the terminology when you read the full methodology (not just the summary that leaves out a ton of important information).
I don’t know enough about the methodology in regards to the measurement devices to be able to have a complete opinion one way or another on the full methodology. For the record, I read the full methodology write up, not just the summary that was posted with the abstract.
Though I do have some general concerns.
1) How much data was actually collected? Between reading the article and various supplements, I am seeing different figures. One place I saw 9 minutes for each type of mask, another place I saw 40 total minutes. Well which is it? And from which set of data are they basing their conclusions?
2) Their version of a control group is sketchy. Their only control was the same person with and without a mask, and they measured each person with both masks. Where’s the control group of people without masks during the entire process? If you’re trying to measure the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of a masks, why would you measure each participant with every variable? The control group is supposed to be an entirely different group. That’s why when they do studies for medications they have a control group that only gets a placebo. That’s just bad science. Did that effect the results? I obviously have no way of knowing.
3) They used four different masks. If the masks were evenly distributed (it doesn’t say that anywhere but that’s the way it
should be), that would mean they only had data on 12 patients max per mask. And were the mask types also evenly distributed by age range? That’s even going to further skew the results.
4) And once again, it’s a small sample size, only 45 subjects, six of which they did not complete the post-baseline testing on. There’s a lot of variance that can occur that can skew average results when a sample size is that small. But if they could only get 45 to volunteer, then you got to work with what you got. There’s only so much you can do short of bribing people to participate.
5) It was in a controlled lab setting, not in a “real life” classroom. Kids don’t exist in controlled lab settings. If I read one of the supplements right, they only had one kid in the room at a time. They should have replicated a real classroom environment, that means with only one or two adults (if they have a teachers aid) with 20-30 kids in the room at the same time.
Even if this would have made the results even more bad for masks it would have been a much more realistic study.
I’d also like to see all the data that was collected, not just the data that elected to publish on that site that supports their conclusion. If you read the supplements, you’ll see that they collected a whole lot of data, and I don’t see that additional data anywhere. And what are these complaints they mention? I don’t see them anywhere. All it does is reference another article.
And not that it’s relevant to the results, but they did use the IR no contact thermometers. And just an FYI, those are not considered clinically accurate as they can have a variance of two whole degrees or more even when calibrated. I don’t think a lot of people know that. If you want accurate temperature readings, use an oral or ear thermometer.
As far as the math goes. There’s not much to disagree with. All they did was take the results and generate a line of best fit. It’s pretty basic high school level math. It’s not like they used funky math to interpret the data they published.
The question would be is how accurate is the data they collected? I have no way of knowing with 100% certainty. I wasn’t there, I don’t have the capability of replicating the study. I would like to see this study replicated with the exact same methodology by someone who didn’t have a slanted opinion on the subject matter.
I will say that coming to any cold-hard, set-in-stone conclusion (which this study
didn’t do, by the way), would be foolish with it having only 45 participants.
