How smear attacks on inconvenient studies work

A study by Baruch Vainshelboim, an expert on sports , published by PMC (PubMed) in November 2020, found 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" and that "wearing facemasks has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects".

Read the full study here:

Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis

The study starts - like any serious scientific study - with a well defined hypothesis, then quotes 66 scientific studies to confirm every component of the hypothesis.

It comes to the conclusion that face masks do cause serious health issues and demands that government and health organizations use proper scientific evidece before imposing measures such as facial masks:

This should end the debate and lead to the immediate lifting of all masks mandates. Except that facial masks were never about health. They are used to maintain the people in fear of a pandemic that is virtually invisible, as it has a very low death toll, which never justified any lockdowns. Given the absence of dead bodies, people could easily forget the threat of this virus.

A study that demonstrated that facial masks are useless and even harmful could not be left standing by the cabal who are pushing the mask mandates.

They put pressure on Stanford to disavow Prof.Vainshelboim and on PMC to retract the study under very flimsy pretexts:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8114149/

It starts with a complete lie:

1. A broader review of existing scientific evidence clearly shows that approved masks with correct certification, and worn in compliance with guidelines, are an effective prevention of COVID-19 transmission.

This is completely false - no such evidence exists. In fact, all the evidence shows that facial masks utterly failed at preventing the spread of COVID, a fact I documente with massive evidence in this article here:

https://www.minds.com/SMetzeler/blog/facial-masks-never-worked-1348484418330693651

3. Table 1. Physiological and Psychological Effects of Wearing Facemask and Their Potential Health Consequences, generated by the author. All data in the table is unverified, and there are several speculative statements.

The author was 100% right with his statements about the harmful effects. They have been confirmed by numerous other studies.

A far more extensive study by multiple German experts and institutions published in 2021 confirms all the findings by Dr Baruch Vainshelboim and adds many more harmful consequences:

Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards? 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33923935/

This study will be much harder to attack, as they can't just smear the authors and institutions as they did with Dr Baruch Vainshelboim. Their evidence is extremely solid.

The only questionable point is his claim about his affiliation with Stanford University:

4. The author submitted that he is currently affiliated to Stanford University, and VA Palo Alto Health Care System. However, both institutions have confirmed that Dr Vainshelboim ended his connection with them in 2016.

So Dr Vainshelboim was affiliated with Stanford university in the past, which means that he is indeed a highly qualified scientist. The fact that he lied about his current affiliation does him no service, but it has absolutely no relevance regarding the quality of the study and was not a cause for retraction. He should just have been allowed to correct his affiliation.

Smear attack against the study

They still had to discredit this study towards the general public, as it was quoted by those who oppose the mask mandates and that is the job of the "fact checkers", which are owned by the same people who push the "vaccines" and hence have a huge interest in maintaining the the panic.

I'll use the Politifact example to expose their methods:

"Medical Hypotheses journal article lacks evidence that masks cause ill effects"
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/apr/16/diamond-and-silk/medical-hypotheses-journal-article-lacks-evidence-/

Here is how the proceded, step by step, as they have absolutely no scientific evidence to disprove the study.

STEP 1:

They could not attack the PMC-published study directly. Even admitting that it was an official, peer reviewed scientific study immediately destroy the Politifact attack, as Politifact has zero credibility. So they had to attack a straw man.

They just picked any random source they could accuse of being biased and of lacking credibiity, so they chose Diamond and Silk who merely referenced the study:

"Diamond and Silk, a pair of pro-Donald Trump activists who have more than 2.38 million followers on Facebook, made what appeared to be an authoritative claim about the risks of mask wearing"

What does it matter who quotes the study? Not at all!

What Politifact does here is a fallacy - "Guilt by association". Anyone who uses fallacies to make an argument can be automatically ignored as dishonest.

STEP 2:

Claim that actions taken by social media censors imply that information is unreliable:

"The April 12 post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed."

That's the second fallacy: circular reasoning. Social media use fact checkers as justification for removing posts and the fact checkers then use the social media censorship as proof that the content they smear was invalid.

STEP 3:

Attack the author of the study in an attempt to undermine his credibility, which is the 3rd fallacy - an ad hominem attack:

"The article cited by the post was written by an exercise physiologist"

He has a PhD in clinical exercise physiology and pulmonary rehabilitation, which makes him one of the top notch experts on such issues.

"in a journal called Medical Hypotheses"

A serious medical publication - demonstrated by the fact that the study was re-published by PMC, Science Direct and NIH!

"It is less science than what the post claims"

Whether a study is scientifically valid or not does not depend on the journal that published it, but on whether it follows the scientific method. Nature, The Lancet, PMC etc. all have been caught publishing fake studies as well as outright political propaganda.

e.g. The Lancet published a letter by a number of scientists who claimed that the lab leak hypothesis was completely invalid and should be ignored. 1 year later, the lab leak hypothesis had become the most likely source of Sars-CoV-2. The Lancet also published 3 studies that claimed that Hydroxychloroquine was "dangerous". All 3 had to be retracted.

Whoever wrote the Politifact smear attack just proved that he does not understand anything about scientific research - or lies intentionally to manipulate the reader.

STEP 4:

Quote some random person with a title who is willing to support the smear attack by Politifact:

"This is a list of generally discredited hypotheses that have been tested and disproved," said Benjamin Neuman, biology professor at Texas A&M University and chief viologist of the university’s Global Health Research Complex.

Naturally, Benjamin Neuman does not provide any evidence for his grotesque claim. He does not cite any papers to support his smear, because none exists. Politifact committed yet another fallacy: an appeal to authority. The status of Prof.Neuman is irrelevant if he cannot provide evidence to back up what he says.

He then launches a slanderous on Dr. Vainshelboim, which would justify a lawsuit:

"This seems to be a piece of deceptive writing from what appears to be a non-expert. It isn't science."

Absolutely nothing about  Dr. Vainshelboim's study is "deceptive". He strictly follows the scientific method and he is an top notch expert on respiratory health.

Benjamin Neuman would have to provide studies that show facial masks to be effective and harmless, but there is not a single valid study that finds a positive effect of wearing face masks to prevent the spreading of a virus. The Bangladeshi study that made that claim and that has been endlessly quoted by supporters of masking is so bad as to be outright fraudulent.

He has zero evidence that would disprove all the studies about the negative effects of wearing facial masks, including self-infection, infection with pathogens deposited on the outside of masks, reduced blood oxygen levels, neurological harm, psychological harm, catastrophic effects on the mental development of children, plastic particles entering the lungs and the blood stream of the wearer etc.

To dismiss all these negative effects and the absence of positive effects of masks without evidence is criminal misconduct by someone who is supposed to be an expert.

Step 5:

Refer to other fake, biased "fact checkers" as validation for the attack. Another circular reasoning fallacy:

A fact-check by USA Today found that mask wearing does not cause hypoxemia, a below-normal level of oxygen in the blood. PolitiFact rated False a claim that masks decrease oxygen intake.

This is a false claim - there's massive evidence that face masks do cause a blood deoxygenation:

Preliminary report on surgical mask induced deoxygenation during major surgery

"Lead Stories and USA Today were among fact-checkers that found that hypercapnia — too much carbon dioxide in the blood — is not caused by mask wearing"

Again more lies by invalid, biased sources!

"And we rated False a claim that wearing face masks is more harmful to your health than going without one."

As we've seen against and again, nothing Politifact claims can be considered truthful in any way - this claim, in particular, is clearly false!

The study is valid - masks are useless

There's no question about it - all the available studies and data show no positive effect of mask mandates as well as serious negative effects of facial masks of any type.

Before this Wuhan virus, everyone agreed that facial masks were of no use outside of healthcare settings for source control - to prevent sick people from spreading their pathogens through sneezing and coughing. That's what WHO, NIH, CDC and all the other health institutions used to say.

They are not even recommended for surgeons during operations, as multiple studies have shown that they do not prevent post-operative wound infection as intended.

As recently as September 2020, the CDC confirmed that facial masks are useless as protection against viruses:

https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2020/09/08/source-control/

So the only people who should wear facial masks of any type - even cloth masks - are those who are symptomatic, i.e. who are coughing and sneezing.

Masks are harmful and serve no useful purpose.