Journalist Paul D. Thacker is calling out Scientific American for publishing essays rife with fraud and what he describes as "citation sorcery" that put public health at risk.
Two papers in particular that pushed masks for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) were found to be pseudoscientific garbage that Scientific American never should have published in the first place.
The first essay was authored by people who have never published a single thing in any academic journal about virus transmission or masks.
"They're just essayists and advocates," Thacker says.
"In their essay, they drew conclusions by making up research that didn't say what they said it did. I call this 'citation sorcery' and it's a rampant problem in corrupt biomedical research. It's the exact problem that exacerbated the opioid epidemic."
What this particular essay contained was a baseless claim, that masks are good, followed by a research citation that has absolutely nothing to do with masks being good.
The cited study was published in 1998 and is all about microbes, not viruses – microbes are several orders of magnitude larger than viruses, meaning they are not interchangeable with viruses in terms of assessing mask efficacy.
Despite this, the authors of the pro-mask essay that Scientific American pushed as "science" cited another inapplicable study as a citation for the false claim that masks somehow show "decades of widespread and successful use."
That cited "study," Thacker explains, is "a peer reviewed journal that discusses the history of masks, but makes no claims about their usefulness in stopping the spread of viruses.
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In another section of the same erroneous pro-mask paper, the authors cite a study alongside the claim that masks have "been validated over decades" that once again has nothing to do with viruses, and is instead about mycobacteria.
"Again, mycobacteria are orders of magnitude larger than viruses," Thacker warns. "This is citation sorcery."
(Related: Last summer, we reported that more than 300 scientific papers on COVID were retracted due to fraud.)
Pro-mask study author claims Scientific American limits citations
When pressed about why the pro-mask study in question was riddled with so many errors, one of its authors claimed that Scientific American limits the number of citations that can be included, so thus they were missing.
"Does anyone believe that SciAm limits hyperlinks?" Thacker asks.
"That ridiculous essay was then cited by Naomi Oreskes (a writer at Scientific American) in another SciAm essay. This is citation laundering."
As for the Cochrane reviews that repeatedly in 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 found that masks do not stop the transmission of viruses, Oreskes wrote these off claiming that alleged evidence showing that masks work never made it into Cochrane because of "methodological fetishism."
"This can be proven false simply by reading the Cochrane review," Thacker notes, warning that Oreskes dismissal of Cochrane for rejecting pro-mask "science" she likes because it fails to "meet its rigid standards" is a red herring.
"All of those reviews relied on epidemiological and observational studies," Thacker says about the Cochrane reviews of masks. "We know this, because Cochrane explained it."
Thacker further explains that in Cochrane's 2020 review, it was explained that the group would no longer be relying on observational studies as there are already sufficient RCTs (randomized controlled trials)."
"That's how evidence based medicine works," Thacker says. "It's not 'methological fetishism.'"
12) For those new to medicine, here's the evidence hierarchy medical experts put in place to try and remove bigotry and bias (citation sorcery!) that is rife in biomedical research.
Notice: essays in Scientific American aren't part of the evidence base. pic.twitter.com/WqkR2ZycdF
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) March 13, 2024
More related news about rampant science fraud can be found at FakeScience.news.
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