Science Feedback, a third-party Facebook “fact-checker”, has admitted that it was wrong to fact check and censor Reason articles. According to the article, the CDC study used to support mask mandate in schools was bogus. Facebook fact-checkers have the power to remove content from the site. Posts that have been fact-checked are less visible and distributed on Facebook while warning labels warn users that they contain allegedly false information.
Science Feedback was furious at Science Feedback’s article published at Reason by Robby Save. It was titled “The Study that Convinced CDC to Support Mask Mandates in Schools”
Science Feedback did not verify the article. Breitbart News has previously reported that The Atlantic, which is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs (billionaire Apple heiress), has been a leading voice in left-wing globalism. Alex Marlow, Breitbart’s editor-in-chief, has called her “the new Soros.”
David Zweig, The Atlantic’s editor, said that the significance of this finding should have caused concern. He wrote that “a number of experts interviewed for this article stated the magnitude of the effect should’ve caused everyone involved in publishing, preparing and publicizing the paper, to hit the brakes”, in a news article that explores the study’s major flaws. They instead hit the gas.
His article shows convincingly that the results of the study are suspect.
The CDC’s back-to-school blitz was centered on the Arizona study. However, it turned out that the Arizona study was wildly misleading. Jonathan Ketcham, an Arizona State University public-health economist, said that there is no way to learn about the effects of school mask requirements from this study. He shared the views of eight other experts who had reviewed the research and with whom I spoke to this article. These experts said that masks could help to prevent COVID from spreading. They may also be necessary for certain situations.
The CDC data, which showed a dramatic increase in risk for students who were not wearing masks, should not be ignored. The CDC stands behind the work of the Arizona study’s authors. The critics were harsh in their harsh assessment. Noah Haber, an interdisciplinarity scientist and co-author of a systematic analysis of COVID-19 mitigation strategies, said that the research was “so unreliable, it probably shouldn’t have been entered into public discourse.”
The study was plagued with problems. It found that many of the schools in its data collection were not even open at the time of the study’s completion. The study did not count cases but outbreaks and it didn’t control for vaccination status. Schools that did not meet the criteria were also included. Zweig claims that the study should be ignored for these reasons and others. While masking in schools might be a good idea it doesn’t answer the question. This study should be thrown out by any public official, Walensky included, who claims to follow the science.
Science Feedback later admitted that the fact check they did was flawed and reversed their course.
The reason was informed by fact-checkers that they had re-read the Reason article and confirmed that the rating was incorrectly applied. “The flag was removed. We regret the error.
