Carl Zimmer: evaluation

Transcript context

…Are they randomized controlled trials? Do we really know? Well, there’s been a debate about randomized controlled trials for something like masks. Certainly, there are some experts who say, “You can only judge this based on randomized controlled trials.” But there are other experts who say, “Well, that’s a bit like saying we need a randomized controlled trial to show that hard hats work. The physics shows you how it works.” Now, do people need to use these things carefully? Yes. Definitely, but you can study the way that these masks trap particles and so on to show that you’re just going to breathe less virus-laden air. Also, randomized controlled trials themselves — they can be very effective in many different settings, but they’re not perfect. If you run a clinical trial with poor study design or if you analyze it incorrectly, it’s not going to be as good as if you were to be taking more careful measures. So, I would say, yes, there’s certainly a debate that’s going on in the community, but certainly, in a number of reviews that have been coming out recently, the consensus is that masks do help. I would think the strongest argument for masks was simply that a lot of people hated them, and so they would stay home instead. We know that would work, but when people are making analogies to things like hard hats, where it’s very, very obvious physically what’s happening, that’s a sign the argument is quite weak. If I go to a social gathering for two hours, either with a mask or without a mask, and I don’t mean the highest quality medical masks — we know they work — I think it’s highly uncertain whether masks work. I’ve read a good half dozen of those papers. I didn’t think they were really very good. I came away agnostic. Not convinced masks don’t work, but it seemed to me the public health community was far too optimistic about masks and were not really following their own standards of evidence. Why is that wrong?…

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