Guest post by Robert Kernodle
A Website that Makes Research Open to All?
My title has a question mark in it, and my first heading has a question mark in it. The question mark in the title means that there might be a question about whether censorship is actually taking place, while the second question mark means that there is definitely a question about the legitimacy of a mission-statement claim. A resolution of the second question mark would get rid of the first question mark, but I’ll leave that resolution up to readers.
For readers who might not know, ResearchGate is a website that has established a professional network for scientists and researchers (with over 17 million members from all over the world) to share their publications, publish their data, and discuss their research. According to its terms of service, ResearchGate’s mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all.
You can check out the full terms of service here: https://www.researchgate.net/terms-of-service
The First Question
Has unreasonable censorship taken place?
On June 3, 2020, ResearchGate removed an article by Physicist, Denis Rancourt, titled Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy
Denis Rancourt has a PhD in Physics (1984, University of Toronto), is a former tenured Full Professor (University of Ottawa), and has published over one hundred articles in leading science journals (You can easily look up his credentials for yourself, if you don’t trust me).
ResearchGate’s notice of content removal to Rancourt stated, … our terms of service prohibit the posting of non-scientific content on the platform.
Rancourt’s own full expose’ of this editorial action is here:
Since Rancourt’s article in question was banished from its original place of publication, I had to dig a bit to find a copy, since all links to that location now land on a generic page endorsing ResearchGate as a place to … make research open to all. [implied eye roll]
To save you the trouble of searching for it, I have loaded a copy to my DropBox here:
I have read Rancourt’s expose’, I have read his original article that was removed, and I have read the terms of service referenced by those who did the removing. Based on all this, I have made my judgment about the actions taken in this case, which leads to …
The Second Question
Does an organization that claims to … make research open to all … adhere to this mission statement, when it removes content by a well-credentialed scientist, who carefully backs his words with known scientific facts linked to clearly displayed and linked citations?– an organization whose terms of service make no requirement of formal peer review? — an organization that seemingly exercises editorial power based soley on the way things are being done, rather than on the scientific basis of this way, which is the very foundation of its mission statement?
Again, I’ll let readers judge and answer this question for themselves.
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/06/10/2009637117?fbclid=IwAR2voyzmLu0RyKsQeQXnylp_0a7VaC_lTf8z9YH9KanjAnyD2wQOpH9GRAo
Anything that prevents natural immunity, is just prolonging the problem.
Humans have lived for 1000s of years through all the the flu seasons which happen every year.
No lockdown or mask wearing.
Is there really something new under the Sun?
Look forward to the scientific answer.
The logic is limited to post hoc ergo propter hoc, “Oh, look, I wore a mask and didn’t get sick. QED!”
Well it’s time to pull the mask off of the ECB…
Don’t let the corona-crisis go to waste, ECB tells Italy
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN23K0H2?__twitter_impression=true
(Reuters) – Italy must not let the economic crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic “go to waste” and should instead reform its stagnant economy so that it thrives after the outbreak, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Saturday.
“I therefore encourage you, as policymakers, not to let this crisis go to waste,” Lagarde told Italian policymakers via video-link during a consultation launched by the government.
“My institution, the ECB, will play its part within its mandate. But it is for you to prove to citizens that our societies will emerge from this transformation stronger and greener,” she added.
Is there a reason why you left this part out from the table directly above that quote? The broadest case by WHO for the general public wearing masks ONLY applies in:
*Areas with known or suspected widespread transmission AND limited or no capacity to implement other containment measures such as physical distancing, contact tracing, appropriate testing, isolation and care for suspected and confirmed cases.”
Do most neighbourhoods in North America or Europe even MEET this condition??? They’re basically talking about slums.
Even so, masking in these instances is recommended by WHO only for: *grocery stores, at work, social gatherings, mass gatherings, closed settings, including schools, churches, mosques, etc.”
NOT walking down the sidewalk or driving in your car. But wear a superhero cape, if it makes you feel better.
Considering who many of the financial backers are for the ResearchGate platform (including Bill Gates), I’m not at all surprised that literature challenging the official orthodoxy is suppressed. There is an incredible amount of money and power at stake in this game around the world, let alone the need for controlling the narrative. Just as with Climate Change, there is a an almost religious fanaticism surrounding COVID-19 and its acolytes will not tolerate blasphemous dissent.
I read through the article and have previously viewed Dr. Rancourt’s video posts on this subject. Although I admit that I have not put forth the effort to review the substantial list of scientific sources he references, I believe the information he presents and the questions he asks are quite valid and warrant additional research and study, not suppression and censorship.
Many of the comments and feed back that I have read here and elsewhere seem to either obscure or misrepresent the key assertions that Dr. Rancourt makes, namely that available research does not support the claim that wearing masks (N95 and less-protective) are statistically effective in preventing the wearer from Influenza and similar viruses, including COVID-19. I blame this in part on his own writing as he clearly has examples from scientific studies to support this, yet presents it in very broad terms including the title of the paper itself. I’m not sure if he solicited editorial feedback from others before posting this on ResearchGate, but I believe it could have been presented a bit more clearly in that regard.
I’ve also read many comments that conflate the common use of masks by medical staff and Asian cultures with proof that Dr. Rancourt’s premise is invalidated. Surgical staff do not wear masks to prevent a patient from exposure to Influenza or similar viruses while performing an operation or other high-exposure-risk situation, just as Asian cultures do not (did not) require entire populations to wear masks and certainly not while also maintaining 6+ feet of distance from other individuals.
Even if Dr. Rancourt were to revise his paper, I think he’s been blacklisted across multiple platforms like many others and will be relegated to “fringe” platforms to be easily derided as “junk science” and research, which is precisely what the fanatics are calling for.
Robert:
I noticed no one was really addressing the questions in your article. I thought I’d chime in. My method was to take a random sample of Rancourt’s citations, read through them and see what, if anything I could find that might be troubling to the reviewer(s) at Researchgate.
I first chose this study at random:
Smith, J.D. et al. (2016)“Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks in protecting health care workers from acute respiratory infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis”, CMAJMar 2016, cmaj.150835; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.150835
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/188/8/567
It seems to me this study presents problems for Rancourt’s case. And if I’m right being a layman, certainly the professional reviewers at ResearchGate would have noticed as well.
Maybe you could comment.
From my reading of the study the authors didn’t address the effectiveness of either N-95 masks or surgical masks to prevent *initial* respiratory infections in general, rather they ONLY compared the effectiveness of the two types of masks to each other:
“No significant difference in risk of laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection was detected between health care workers using N95 respirators and those using surgical masks in the meta-analysis of the RCTs (OR 0.89, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.64–1.24; I2 = 0%), the cohort study (OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.03–6.41) or the case–control studies (OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.25–3.36; I2 = 0%) (Figure 2).”
In other words, the study purported to show that regardless of mask type, the infection rate was the same. But this doesn’t address the infection rate. What if the infection rate was lower when using either type of mask, but just not lower using one in favor of the other?
The conclusion of the study (emphasis added):
“Although N95 respirators appeared to have a protective advantage over surgical masks in laboratory settings, our meta-analysis showed that there were insufficient data to determine definitively whether N95 respirators are superior to surgical masks in protecting health care workers against transmissible acute respiratory infections in clinical settings.”
Also see the “Limitations” section of this study. It lays out other caveats that seem relevant. I think I would not have used this study if I were attempting to prove the same hypothesis as Rancourt.
Perhaps ResearchGate has a point.
You pick one referenced study “at random” and that study does not contradict Rancourt’s thesis. You might dig a little deeper before dismissing Rancourt.
Yeah that’s kind of the point.
Tell me how it helps it. And if it doesn’t, why is it included in his set of evidence?
sycomputing.
The reference you noted is listed, in Rancourt’s article, under the heading, Review of Medical Literature, where I perceive him as simply presenting the types of studies being done.
Notice now what Rancourt says about mask studies in general:
No RCT study with verified outcome shows a benefit for HCW or community members in households to wearing a mask or respirator. There is no such study. There are no exceptions. Likewise, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public (more on this below).
I take this to mean that the studies cited by Rancourt are related to specific conclusions that
do NOT address specifically a decided benefit of masks. This is one of those studies that does not go that far. The study, as you so well point out, merely states that there is no detectable DIFFERENCE in protection between a surgical mask and an N95. That’s the point — that’s what a lot of these studies in the area of mask studies do — they compare, without noting exactly the final EFFECTS they are comparing. No such study, thus, has established a decided benefit (in terms of a measure of effectiveness against preventing infection) for community members wearing masks.
He is just pointing out what types of research have been done in this area, to strengthen his point that no such study has been done to justify the current maskmanic (my word) dictates of various states and businesses.
Interesting approach.
Thanks for the clarification!
I think I answered this in a reply that has not appeared yet (my replies do not appear immediately), but, at the risk of being overly redundant, I will offer an answer again:
The reason I think Rancourt lists this study is to illustrate the type of research that has been done on face masks. It helps by showing the specific questions that such research is looking at. It shows that, often times, the research is NOT addressing the most pressing question of actual measured benefit to a community, when masks are used en mass. Again, there is no such study. There is this sort of study or that sort of study or another sort of study, but NO SUCH STUDY that specifically serves as a basis to require people legally to wear masks in public for a provable preventative effect for the whole population.
Yep! Thanks again regardless!
If “they” tell the “sheep” to wear masks, the sheep comply. Telling the sheep to do so is simply one more small step in mind control. Plus, the sheep enjoy being told what to do. It’s a win-win. If Trump told the sheep not to wear masks, 50.5% of the sheep would wear them. If Obama told the sheep to wear masks, 49.5% wouldn’t wear them. In regard to this article……”so what else is new?”
The new home for my paper is viXra: https://vixra.org/abs/2006.0044
My latest paper is this one: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341832637_All-cause_mortality_during_COVID-19_No_plague_and_a_likely_signature_of_mass_homicide_by_government_response
Thanks WUWT for this.
Denis Rancourt,
Thanks for stopping by.
I hope you don’t mind that I stored a copy of your controversial article in my DropBox to share here. I was afraid that it would be too hard for people to find, and I thought it deserved a wide view. As I wrote, I had to dig around a bit to find a copy, since the original link led nowhere useful.
I have already read your all-cause-mortality article too, which also has a good blurb relevant to face-mask effectiveness (or lack thereof).
Your phrase, “mass homicide by government response”, is fairly dramatic. It sort of opens up a line of discussion about the definition of “homicide”, if we choose to label things this way. Can “homicide” really correctly describe a collective response by a massive number of people? — that’s a new twist on the term, if so.
That’s a whole ‘nother discussion, though, and I’m not sure the mods would be happy about the drift to that topic here.
Suffice to say that, in bringing this to WUWT’s attention, I succeeded in getting the word out a bit further on a policy response that I personally find disturbing, intimately invasive, and thieving of individual rights to make personal judgments according to know facts.
Thanks for your efforts, which only confirm my own findings and observations.
“know facts” = “knowN facts” — the mind fills in what the fingers forget. (^_^)
Think about the main purpose for the government to endorse mask wearing. You have a virus that very little is known about it. It can be deadly to certain people, there is no cure, there is no vaccine, there is nothing you can do. It made people feel helpless, so the government pushes wearing masks whether they work or not in order to make people feel like they are doing something in an otherwise hopeless situation.
Wearing a mask has given people a sense of safety and security. Now the problem is going to reverse that so not wearing a mask doesn’t feel naked and fearful.
“To my post: Dare science consider contrary evidence? Rancourt reviews research on masks:…” Denis Rancourt responded:
https://archive.org/details/covid-censorship-at-research-gate-2/
I replied:
https://www.nature.com/articles/484164a
The medical efficacy of masks’ conundrum has been studied for several decades. From memory a Cochran meta-analysis of simple surgical masks sorted for rigor pointed to a 6% reduction in viral infection spread in 1 (one) notable context. The 6% reduction in viral transmission risk was when in home care givers were attending their in home personal charges.
Hey, it’s all so simple. Today, China—with a total population in excess of 1.4 BILLION people—reported to the WHO that, over the last 24 hours leading up to their report, they had a total of 12 (yes, twelve) newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and no deaths due to the virus (see https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200613-covid-19-sitrep-145.pdf?sfvrsn=bb7c1dc9_2 ).
No other county with a population over 1 million has such low per capita statistics regarding COVID-19. Therefore, it is obvious, isn’t it, that all countries should be doing exactly what China is doing to fight the spread of this disease . . . the wearing of face masks, the exact type of face masks, the handling of face masks . . . all of that.
Why, China has even gone so far as to have lifted its lockdown of the city of Wuhan, more than a month ago (see https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/07/asia/coronavirus-wuhan-lockdown-lifted-intl-hnk/index.html ). Wonderful news.
One wonders why the WHO hasn’t actively promoted the exact methods China is using so effectively to control this virus within their borders . . . specifically, the exact type of face mask they are presumed to have distributed to their citizens to wear. The WHO and China have an especially cordial relationship, so what’s up with that?
Wait . . . who said you cannot trust the CCP? Well, they obviously must know a lot more about COVID-19 than any other government on Earth . . . there is a very good reason for that. Besides, why would they have any reason to lie about their COVID-19 statistics?
/occasional sarc now off
Here is a different angle, a hypothesis at this stage needing confirmation, as by interviews with participants and so on.
I postulate that the mask has given lawless wearers at protests an extra confidence to burn, loot and kill, feeling that they are less able to be identified afterwards from videos and witness interviews. Has the mask given the protestors an excuse for gathering en masse when regulations require separation and small groups, not thousands of protestors, some of who are on record as saying they obeyed safety to others by wearing masks, so their actions were excused.
Now, how does one include this hypothesis in a scientific discourse that might have to run the gauntlet of censorship by gate keeper, non-scientific editors? If I as a scientist promoted this hypothesis on Research Gate, could I be assured in advance of a neutral evaluation of its scientific worth and freedom from capricious censorship?
The whole topic of masks is a mess of contradictory personal opinions sometimes driven by ideology, most devoid of any proper scientific investigation. People who simply bleat what they like from the words of others are like sheep in a mob, much nicer when they shut up.
Geoff S
As to the “stigma” part:
Many wear fear masks because their jobs require them.
Where I live, most people are too well-informed to wear them, but a substantial number do. Most of those seem to believe that they themselves are protected by the mask. Some wear a lot of clothing as well, and look around fearfully as they observe the anti-social distancing. (SOCIAL distancing would be close enough to socialize–less than a meter).
The smarter ones understand that masks are only supposed to protect OTHERS from the wearer. By that belief, non-wearing indeed produces a stigma of uncaring, selfish endangering of others.
to me mask-wearers are stigmatized as gullible, believing anything in SJW or mainstream narratives and having little or no ability to verify information (fact-check means compared to Democrat or SJW narratives).
Having mentioned SJW narratives, I better mention the book “SJWs Always Lie.” Most WUWT are politically Incorrect and that book is a VITAL survival manual. Otherwise you will Apologize–which arms the pipsqueaks to kill your job.
“Many wear fear masks because their jobs require them.”
That certainly applies to me. My retirement job is about 25 hrs per week (no nights or weekends) working in a small, family owned appliance store. I handle sales, customer service and scheduling repairs and deliveries. We did not shut down being deemed essential due to the need for people to have working refrigerators, cooking and laundry equipment. Those that couldn’t get repaired required new sales. I have been dealing with the public on a daily basis the whole time. We all wear masks to give customers entering the store a sense of safety and to negate any fear they have of interaction with our staff.
NIOSH stated it very clearly after the SARS outbreak that there is no international or national standard for respirators or masks that will actually stop Coronaviruses from being aspirated. They clearly stated that the CV is too small and that the actual limit of the current standards is designed only for particulate of 0.300 microns and above for the purpose of stopping particulate that our lungs CANNOT clear through natural processes: construction, demolition and other activities actually produce dust smaller than 0.300 microns but that is easily handled by our lungs.
Internationally, even in the best HEPA+MERV18 systems 0.300 microns is the smallest thing the masks will stop. There is no “but it will catch smaller” that people claim because that is bullshit idiocy. As long as the 0.300 micron holes exist stuff smaller than that is going to fly through. Coronaviruses do NOT need to be wet in order to be viable – they were distributed internationally by the Chinese postal service and other shippers.
The problem exists in the facts of airflow where the product and standard we need is 0.050 micron filtration but the negative pressure created by the standard 250cm2 mask with that restriction is very close to vacuum.
Again the old “won’t use it until the government forces us to” rule applies, the reason we don’t have deeply pleated masks is because they’re expensive and people won’t use them unless they’ll be arrested for not.
Anybody reading about HEPA and MERV needs to remember that SARSCov2 was measured at 0.128 microns and studies in France found out that it not only doesn’t need to be wet to be viable but that it can survive temperatures of up to 94°C and still infect.
SARSCov2 is not “alive” it is a Coronavirus: a molecular spring-trap that tears open a cell and ejects genetic overriding material into the cell. It is a weaponized biological balloon.
The “doctors” at the WHO are either too ignorant or too political to admit that their knowledge is so out-of-date that it is unsafe for them to retain their degrees.
OK so you wear a mask. But how does the little virus know it’s not allowed to enter via your uncovered eyes?
Appeal to authority… a physicist has a say on Covid masks, good. And his 100 papers are on physics or hygiene? I can see why it was removed. It starts out by saying they don’t work – while there is research saying the opposite. Still in the summary, he goes on to say that they cannot work due to aerosol size – this is not an amazing insight by the non hygiene expert physicist, this was never denied by anyone. The point is though that the propagation of a cloud of aerosols is very different when sneezing etc with or without a mask. Which is why it had been said from the outset that the masks do not protect one from getting Covid, but rather mitigate the spread by an infected wearer of a mask. Which is important because most people don’t even know they had or have Covid. And so it is already clear before the end of his summary that there is great potential for this paper to go off the rails. You told Pachauri to stick to his railroads and maybe you should get some inspiration from this line of thinking. A Physicist is not a hygiene experts. Hygiene professors even rebuke virologists who speak out about prevention on national TV, saying that they are outside of their expertise. And on a general note, there is no such thing as Covid or Covid 19 since February because it is called Sars Cov 2 since then.
@Matt:
Matt appeals to a profession title … he has a say on a physicist who alludes to the physics claims of mask effectiveness. And is his commentary on the physical effectiveness based on those physics principles? Hardly.
It [Rancourt’s paper] starts out that way, because that is the premise of the article, which is then explained, as you read further. This is standard exposition mechanics — you make a claim, you explain the claim.
Research articles that you endorse often have concluding statements at odds with tentative language and uncertainties expressed in the bodies of those articles.
More importantly, there IS research concluding that masks do not work. Take a look at this analysis, for example (noting the credentials of the writers): https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data
… where we find the conclusion, In sum, given the paucity of information about their performance as source control in real-world settings, along with the extremely low efficiency of cloth masks as filters and their poor fit, there is no evidence to support their use by the public or healthcare workers to control the emission of particles from the wearer.
So, when there is both research concluding that masks work and research concluding that masks do not work, what does this suggest? — It suggests to me that we really do not know, and that policy dictates to act as though we do know are acts of desperation to create appearances of doing something, to make the masses feel better, to maintain public/institutional trust, or to signal compliance with unproven beliefs of elected leaders.
I fail to see why you emphasize the hygiene profession, when the principle question of mask efficiency is precisely a physics question, a science question whose proper evaluation is NOT merely dependent on traditional practices endorsed by a given profession, but rather dependent on evidence obtained by examining the physical fundamentals upon which those traditions rest. Appeal to a professional traditions does not eliminate this need for evidence.
The propagation of a cloud of aerosols is different HOW? That is the more specific question. How exactly does such a cloud behave, from a physics standpoint, in detail? I do not see that this question has been answered, and until it is answered, we cannot assume simply that one aspect of fluid flow determines the infective ability of this cloud.
Consider that the cloud is not stopped, but changed in its direction of flow and in its intensity of impact. Side jets of a sneeze, for example, emanating from the sides and top of a mask near the nose, propel the cloud in a focused, pressure-driven stream upward and laterally, while the porosity of a simple cloth mask still allows considerable bulk of the cloud to penetrate, with many times the necessary dose of virus particles to cause an infection.
So, the point is that this level of physical detail has not been studied or modeled, as I see it, and current practices are heavily dependent on tradition, backed by little more than incomplete, idealized laboratory exercises that test a limited set of circumstances, under non-real-world conditions, where the human factor of proper compliance is all but denied.
So, are you under the impression that masks eliminate infective, aerosolized particles from the air? — that masks on a multitude of people (with all their collective side leakage and porosity allowing significant penetration of aerosolized clouds) significantly control the infective dose of particles available to penetrate masks from the outside? — and that somehow these outside particles can get IN effectively to infect, yet the inside particles contained by the mask cannot get OUT effectively to infect?, even though those outside particles originated as the inside particles that managed to escape? I hope you see the conundrum here.
No. Which is irrational, given what I just wrote. Hence, I fail to see any “going off the rails” by Rancourt. I do suggest, however, that you might not even be on the rails, but rather somewhere in the clouds.
Again, you argue from profession appeal, which is not convincing. Why not argue the facts, point by point, regardless of what profession brings them out? By your reasoning, I cannot consider anything you write worthy of attention, because you are not a professional writer.
Yawn! You do it again — appeal to profession, in an attempt to divert from specific arguments on their own merit. And you ignore the fact that the principles of one profession can be embedded in the practices of another profession and often overlooked or insufficiently handled, resulting in practices based on tradition, not validated by the profession needed to validate those practices.
You are NOT correct here. SARS-CoV-2 is how it is written, and what this is … is the VIRUS that causes Covid-19, which is the DISEASE. This seems needlessly confusing to have two names, but that’s my understanding: The virus has a name, and the disease caused by the virus has a slightly different name. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus name. Covid-19 is the disease name associated with the virus that causes the disease.
“no such thing as Covid or Covid 19 since February”
Don’t be a nomenclature prig. It smacks of “holier than thou” ism. Makes one want to call it “Wuhan flu” out of spite.
The best “nomenclature pigs” should strive to be correct pigs, like this little piggie (moi). (^_^)
Well, yeah, you wrote “prig”, and I read “pig”, … so I should have written, “this little priggie”.
Pig, prig — I wonder whether the small spelling difference reflects in the difference between the characters that those spellings label. Namely, is a prig more often a pig than not? Can a pig be a prig?
… deep questions for highly disciplined minds to probe.
I know, I know, off topic to the max, but, hey, give a guy a chance to gloss over his failed attempts at being clever.
FYI Robert I complained about the censorship. Here’s what happened:
ResearchGate:
Thanks for contacting us. We don’t comment on individual cases.
In rare cases where we feel the need to remove content, we communicate this to the member who posted it. Discussion and scrutiny ultimately advance science and generally, at ResearchGate, we err on the side of supporting freedom of expression. However, if we have reason to believe that content on our platform has the potential to cause harm, then we reserve the right to remove it.
My Response:
I find your response totally unacceptable. Virtually all the 17 million members of ResearchGate are highly educated and very intelligent people who are quite capable of making their own informed decisions about what is accurate or inaccurate. The idea that we need ResearchGate to censor material to protect us from things that have “the potential to cause harm” is ludicrous and insulting
Nearly ANYTHING has the “potential to cause harm” if inexact, misunderstood, over hyped, misapplied, used with excess confidence…
With that “potential to cause harm” you wouldn’t publish anything;
https://youtu.be/wfGAktuU93s
The navy released a study from the TR yesterday. 80% of those not wearing masks were infected. 60% of those wearing masks were infected. So at least in the confined spaces of a warship, masks help some.
Again, you cannot look at only masks — that is simple minded, correlation/causation conflation.
Every single day, the sun rises, and about a couple hours later, I am starving. I could do a detailed statistical study showing you how closely linked my morning appetite is with the rising of the sun.
But does the sun’s rising every day CAUSE me to be hungry two hours later?