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Comment by downWidOutaFite | Hacker News Reader

The authors were very publicly biased against masks before this paper. It's hard to take it objectively.

Absolutely none of this has ever been objective, or even based in reality, let alone evidence, so I find it hard to care.

The issue was never about masks, but of two highly-polarized groups (few of them having any real knowledge on the subject) dehumanizing the other under color of Science™.

It was purposefully misunderstanding and sloganizing Science™ into simplistic, unscientific statements like "Masks work" and "Masks don't work" [for what? for whom? etc]. Objective science isn't sold as bumper stickers and lapel pins on Etsy.

It ignored completely and purposefully the two extremely basic and fundamentally different modes of operation: protecting the wearer from inhaling Bad Things (Masks Don't Work) and protecting people other than the mask wearer from what the mask-wearer is exhaling (Masks Work).

The Science™ on this hasn't really changed in any meaningful way, and the whole subject is tiresome. People who can't think past Mask Good or Mask Bad might think otherwise, but their opinions are perhaps even less valuable than this study.

Besides, if you're not a physician or have a PhD in maskology, how could you possibly begin to evaluate this evidence anyway? It's so very complicated and technical, see. You should be Trusting The Experts™.

Except the experts are mostly objective. However, the waters have been muddied in the public's view by anti-maskers, like anti-vaxxers. This is a real catastrophe of the pandemic.

Sure, but on the other other hand, it might be difficult to expect someone who really believes in masks to try to prove they don't work. Or, to publish their data if they find that masks don't work(because they believe they have some flaw in their logic, or they think there are social benefits to mask wearing not covered in their study, etc).

The people that believe in masks should be the ones testing if they work. The situation you are describing is a messed-up environment that puts politics above science.

The people that don't believe masks work should be busy testing something they believe in.

Believing masks to be slightly effective at preventing airborne illnesses seems like a pretty common sense default viewpoint though. No barrier provides no benefit, a completely impermeable barrier like wearing a fish tank on your head would provide 100% benefit. So it makes sense that a partially permeable barrier would provide some benefit.

Most anti-maskers say "masks don't work" without trying to understand that masks are not a 100% solution, and nothing in life is. But even if a mask is 50% effective (not a scientifically proven number, just an example), I'll take that mitigation over 0% of not wearing a mask (not a random number, wearing no mask actually provides no protection at all), every single time.

But surely the amount matters. What if it’s only 1% better?

>> The situation you are describing is a messed-up environment that puts politics above science.

This has been going on for a while and just came into sharp focus during the pandemic. Its horrifying to think science is now so politically based that any study that contradicts what the gov is telling you is somehow suppressed because they know better? Do you remember when the Canadian Health Minister said people should ignore any information that isn't coming directly from the government?

Our dystopian future arrived during the pandemic and science went from using a rigorous established methodology to allowing the government to tell us that science is now decided as a popularity contest like a survey. "99% of doctors recommend the vaccine so you should trust "the science" and get it or you're going to kill your grandma!"

> Do you remember when the Canadian Health Minister said people should ignore any information that isn't coming directly from the government?

On that environment, with several groups spreading lies everywhere, and with a public health issue that couldn't possibly turn into a political hot topic, that statement made a lot of sense. That is not suppression of scientific speech. (Suppression of scientific speed happened a lot less than popular press manipulation. Still happened, though.)

Personally, I am much more afraid about how people managed to turn covid into a political hot topic.

There was suppression of speech as well. For example, doctors were fired for publicly stating facts backed by research that turned iut to be more accurate than the offivial narrative.

I remember how in Ontario the actual science, pardon me, the Science Advisory Table, was some meeting that absolutely could not be public and Science™ only occurred in the back room secret meetings, with the Premier coming out once in a while to give updates, telephone-game style

Why? You think only people who are negative towards a specific issue may have bias? Or that it is impossible that they are negative based on some experience or hunch or non-conclusive indication, rather than political bias? Do tou understand that being negative vs. positive is just about framing the question?

When was the last time you got out to spend months of your life and of the people around you intent on trying something that you expected not to work?

Science advances by both negative and positive results. So for a researcher, negative results are also “expected to work”. Furthermore, scientific ideal is that researchers are neutral towards the results. Does not always happen, of course.

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