Fifteen months after caving to pro-mask public figures by applying a scarlet letter to its research questioning the effectiveness of masks against influenza and COVID-19 – over the strident objections of its authors, whose critics declared victory – a U.K.-based international research collaborative funded by American taxpayers has reached an anticlimactic conclusion.
The collaborative, Cochrane, said it will not require the authors of “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses,” an ongoing 18-year systematic review last updated in January 2023, to revise the “plain language summary and abstract” despite Editor-in-Chief Karla Soares-Weiser claiming the study had been “widely misinterpreted” as “masks don’t work.”
The June update to Soares-Weiser’s March 2023 statement, which itself may have violated the Committee on Publication Ethics protocol by unilaterally changing the “interpretation and conclusions” of the authors, raises as many questions as it answers, particularly why the once-celebrated “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine took so long to do nothing.