Interview On Mask Science With Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya

Everything you need to know about mask madness (or at least most of it) in one hour.

3 minute read

Hey readers,

I’m alerting you to an interview I did with Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya about mask science on the podcast he co-hosts called “The Illusion of Consensus.” I’ve written quite a bit about masks, something I didn’t start out meaning to do.

When the pandemic began, I just masked up like everyone else, even though I knew that many experts didn’t believe masks helped stop the spread of viruses. I actually wrote a piece about this for The BMJ in April 2020, where I pointed out “America should have had a firm and widely disseminated policy on face masks, long ago.”

To make my point in The BMJ, I linked to a March 2020 essay in the New York Times by Zeynep Tufekci, who argued that the public was being misled by misinformation because “masks work.”

What I didn’t know, at the time, is that a month before she began campaigning for masks in March 2020, Tufekci tweeted a February 2020 essay in which she advised her followers to not worry about masks because they don’t really help stop viruses.

Nothing changed in the science on masks between February and March of 2020, and Zeynep is not the only person who was part of “The Great Mask-Science Flip Flop of 2020.”

Here’s the text of Tufekci’s two essays side by side.

I missed all this, at the time. But by 2022, I had bumped into too many experts who argued that masks weren’t all that great at stopping viruses, pointing me to research and studies to back up their claims. I’ve now written several pieces going into the research finding that masks don’t stop viruses, as well as the propaganda that continues to promote masks, despite this science.

Dr. Bhattacharya and I covered quite a bit of this story on masks in a little over one hour. Try it out and give a listen.

Episode 35: Paul Thacker On The Illusion of Consensus Of Masking

If you’re interested in revisiting the prior pieces I reported on masks, see those below:

• Researchers Find No Evidence (Again!) Of Mask Effectiveness, Yet Self-Styled Experts Continue Promotion: Cochrane Review author says governments "don’t have the science to back up what they claim."

• Unmasking the New York Times’ Zeynep Tufekci: Neither scholar nor journalist, a media influencer cuts down competitors in an academic knife fight.

• Cochrane Shoots Back at Media Influencer Zeynep Tufekci’s Claims of a “Correction”: And what caused the great mask-science flip flop of 2020?

• Congress Corrects the Record on CDC Director Walensky’s False Claim about Masks: Undisclosed conflicts of interest on COVID policy dog Cochrane’s Board

• Zeynep Tufekci’s Unseemly Collusion With Cochrane Officials to Attack Scientists Is Falling Apart: As scientists revolt against Cochrane, Tufekci continues harassing researchers on Twitter.

• Florida Grand Jury Finds Average Citizens Aren’t Buying “Follow the Science” Propaganda on Masks and Social Distancing: The expert class is put on trial and found to be lacking expertise.

• INVESTIGATION: CDC Upset Their Own Expert Advisers Not Recommending Masks, Demands They Recommend Masks: Too much science is forcing CDC to request a science do over after CDC’s own scientist and outside experts find N95 respirators don’t work better than masks—and neither do much to protect from COVID.

• CDC Warns CDC’s Own Scientists That Their Finding on Masks “Is Not Scientifically Correct”: During a congressional hearing, CDC Directory Mandy Cohen did not rule out mandating masks again for toddlers.

• Scientific American’s Mask Essays Are Rife With Fraud and Citation Sorcery: Making up facts to support ideological positions is a special kind of magic but has no place in modern research.