And in science, we don’t consider a method like that a valid test without a evidence, which is what his study was. That’s part of the scientific method called validation. You’re very wrong that it’s obvious and would thus be accepted as a valid test without a publication of this type.
That’s just an absurd comparison. If you aren’t interested in actually engaging with the issues, that’s cool. Won’t waste my time.
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I’m a professor in the sciences who is funded by the NIH. Want to bet who has the better understanding of the nuances of how science works in this setting? Maybe, just maybe, I have relevant expertise here that is more nuanced than a dictionary definition.
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We’re done. I will continue believing this test until another test (using the scientific method) disproves this method OR another, better method is conducted that provides me with better results for this type of test.
Maybe Dr. Fischer will read all the critiques and, if he finds them valid, improve his own testing methods for this test and do a re-test (also part of the scientific method)
I never said the test doesn’t work. What I said was that the findings published in the study about mask types shouldn’t be taken as a conclusive application of the test (which the study authors themselves point out) and themselves taken seriously, which is what all of the mass media coverage of the study focuses on. If the media reported accurately, it would say “new test developed to compare mask efficacy” but methods findings don’t really generate clicks.
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It’s like if I made a new way to test blood sugars, and was trying to decide if my test was any good. If I bring in a few people from here, test their blood sugars a few times, I might be able to determine that my test works, great. But if I only have a few readings from each person, I can’t conclude that one person’s blood sugars are higher on average than another’s. This is like if I did that study, published it to show my test works, and the media covered it by saying “X person has higher blood sugars than Y person!” Complete distortion of the purpose of my study and my findings, and the part they are reporting on isn’t valid. Now that I have my test, I could use it to check that second hypothesis, but I’d obviously need to design a very different study to do that, probably with many many more tests per person I’m comparing, maybe focusing on fasting blood sugars or something to standardize it or specify what I’m comparing, or something.
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Although I agree with the critique overall, this seems kind of an oversimplification. Overlapping standard deviations don’t necessarily mean that the differences aren’t statistically significant, but given the small sample size and small differences, they probably aren’t statistically significant.
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Yeah I would agree with that. I think the more compelling concern is that we have one person for a lot of these tests who themselves has a lot variability between observations. You def need a much larger sample of both people and observations for each person/mask to conclude anything in a robust way. This is otherwise super prone to error/random chance driving results.
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Masks have nothing to do with it. Whether or not those kids wear a mask, or the parent wears a mask, the kids still aren’t going to get breakfast; the adults still won’t give them the attention they need. It’s a stretch to blame masks for those problems, or to cite masks as an exacerbating factor.
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This is a good article about why it doesn’t work for non scientists to interpret science… found it interesting… it’s certainly something I’ve become a lot more aware of over course of the covid situation
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That article summarizes the issues well. I would also say that the majority of journalists who write stories on science fall outside of the people adequately educated to understand it, which is why any science I’ve understood well enough to be expert on tends to be highly distorted in mass media coverage, usually in the manner where findings are reduced to an overly simplistic takeaway that dramatically increases causality, increases generalizability, ignores key limitations, misses the true scientific function of the study, and/or inverts or somehow alters or misses key logic in the actual findings. The overly simplistic takeaway makes for enticing headlines though. This is how a completely flawed paper showing dark chocolate consumption helps with weight loss a scientist literally published as a joke to show how fraudulent predatory journals are and how they will publish bad science got picked up and reported on as a serious valid finding, and I bet at least a few people reading this saw that and think of it as a fact they know. (It’s not.)
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My last note on this because I’m annoyed by the continued assumption that the only way to understand science is to BE a scientist. Any educated individual has spent an equal amount of time in college writing papers, critically thinking and analyzing data, doing research in their own respective fields and understands how to parse good from bad sources. You don’t have to be a scientist as you are indicating to “understand science” or the scientific method.
I’m more than capable of analyzing the data and understanding it. You’re lucky if you get two ACTUAL SCIENTIESTS to agree on the same data set so the assumption that only scientists can understand scientific articles is pretty arrogant and false.
So, again - I read it one way, you read it another and we disagree. Period.
I don’t often fall prey to the “mass media hysteria” that any of these critiques refer too so your summarization may actually be accurate and applicable to easily impressionable folks who can have their opinions swayed with FB memes, but I’m not one of those guys.
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You still need to have a certain level of background knowledge about the topic of a scientific paper to be able to judge its contents. Mathematicians and biologists lack the expertise to assess each other’s papers. There’s no such thing as a generic skill to distinguish between good and bad papers.
I know you’re pretty passionate about your opinions, but let’s not pretend that there’s a lot of disagreement about this paper among scientists. Even the study authors themselves are quite clear that this is a proof-of-principle study.
From the paper:
“The work we report here describes a measurement method that can be used to improve evaluation in order to guide mask selection and purchase decisions.”
“Again, we want to note that the mask tests performed here (one speaker for all masks and four speakers for selected masks) should serve only as a demonstration. Inter-subject variations are to be expected, for example due to difference in physiology, mask fit, head position, speech pattern, and such.”
From the Duke Health press release:
“This was just a demonstration - more work is required to investigate variations in masks, speakers, and how people wear them – but it demonstrates that this sort of test could easily be conducted by businesses and others that are providing masks to their employees or patrons,” Fischer said.
“We wanted to develop a simple, low-cost method that we could share with others in the community to encourage the testing of materials, masks prototypes and fittings,” Fischer said. “The parts for the test apparatus are accessible and easy to assemble, and we’ve shown that they can provide helpful information about the effectiveness of masking.”
From Live Science:
The public should “absolutely not” use this as evidence that neck gaiters are worse than wearing no mask at all, Fischer said. “We tested one mask because we just had that mask lying around … there are plenty of other gaiters out there,” some that could be more protective, he said. Even the way people wear them can change how protective they are, he added.
From Science News:
“We tried to be as careful with our language as possible in interviews,” says Warren S. Warren, a Duke chemist and coauthor of the study. While he says their observations suggest some thin gaiters might be problematic, “the press coverage has careened out of control” for a study testing a measuring technique and that looked at just one mask of each type.
“At an absolute minimum you’d need to test six to 10 different subjects, and six to 10 samples of the same kind of mask,” says Charles Haas, an environmental engineer at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Says Haas: “It’s an interesting technique that could be useful. But the results of this study have been misinterpreted beyond what the authors intended.”
In conclusion, the study was misrepresented by the media. It does not show that some masks are worse than nothing. Scientists don't disagree about that at all, not even the study authors themselves. Period.
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As you are yours. What we both have is our…opinions. No matter how much you try to elevate yourself above others in this thread who disagree with the assumptions and/or conclusions. And your assumption is that I have NO scientific background!
It’s a great thing that I didn’t learn of this from the media then.
Disagree.
We can continue going on and on if you want too but it won’t change my interpretation of the study results. And it doesn’t sound like you’re changing your interpretation of them…and from the FB woman who said some things you thought were great for “the lay people” (everyone except you obviously.)
Having said all that I said - I acknowledge that my opinion may just be wrong. Not going to pretend I know everything and I’ve always got things to improve on. I’ll dig more and see if I can come out to the same conclusion you have.
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Nonsense.
Nope.
Of course it won’t, you even disagree with the study authors.
That’s not my statement. You’re mixing things up.
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I do agree that the sample size was small and this should be expanded to a much larger size if you want the conclusion to be something other than anecdotal. I hope that they do expand their study into a much larger sized study with many participants speaking into many different mask types. I guess where I’m coming from is that even though this study was small - it was conducted in a scientific manner and the results they obtained, although small, were results. Is there a lot of room for improvement on the test? Yes. But given the sample set they did test against - the results weren’t intentially skewed for or against any specific mask type - it was just a 1:1 test and the results are what they were.
Hopefully this or similiar tests do get completed that test all kinds of different scenarios such as heavy breathing, coughing, sneezing, etc, by many people.
One thing I think is very agreed upon by most of the non-quackery scientific community is that ANY mask is better than NO mask when around other people.
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OK, that seems reasonable. I think we can agree on that
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No. But you’ve made it super clear in this thread that you don’t understand a number of aspects of the nuances of this type of research, regardless of your education. You can disagree with me all you want, but as @Boerenkool also pointed out, I’m largely literally making the same points the authors do.
Did you learn about it by reading the scientific article first? Or by messenger pigeon?
You can disagree all you like, but it still doesn’t show that some masks are worse than nothing in any scientifically meaningful way. I don’t know why you’re the one throwing around definitions of the scientific method while consistently ignoring how it actually works.
OMG. I posted that because it was a well written and comprehensive explanation of the issues with the media coverage of the study, and I didn’t feel like taking the time to write what would have been a very similar long post myself, reflecting my own expertise in research methods. It was simply an effort to provide a helpful breakdown, not in any way the basis for my points, but you seem really fixated on it. I’m not saying you should believe her bc she’s a random FB woman. I’m saying she makes points that are clear but that you can also just go see for yourself are true by reading the article and supplementary data. And yes, if you don’t work in the field and conduct, analyze, and publish research, you are lay person in this area. I am not in that aspect of this discussion and in the issues of research methods we are discussing. If you asked me about the details of the physics behind their test, I would be though, which is not an insult, but simply a reflection of the fact that that type of physics/engineering isn’t what I do.
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