More Masking Madness: Appealing To One's Own Credentials Is Always A False Argument

I am old enough to remember when Scientific American was a respected publication for those wanting to follow the world of scientific research.

Seeing Scientific American reprint an article from “The Conversation” (which is never about actual conversation, it seems, but is more about politically correct virtue signalling) by two self-righteous, self-anointed “experts” is quite saddening (and maddening). That the article in question seeks once again to resurrect the long discredited and debunked notion that universal masking stops the spread of infectious respiratory disease—i.e., exploded “Science™” that was undone long ago by actual science—merely underscores how far the mighty have fallen.

Nor is there even any doubt that the allegedly scientific arguments in the reprinted article are anything but pure horse hockey. That’s all they can be when the second paragraph is a blatant appeal to authority fallacy.

We are infectious disease epidemiologists and researchers, and we have spent our careers focused on understanding how viruses spread and how best to stop them.

Call me cynical but I just don’t find an essay predicated upon “I know better than you what’s good for you” to be all that persuasive, or impressive.

Science hinges on the logical scrutiny of facts, data, and evidence. Logical fallacies are lethal to scientific arguments, and basing an entire essay on a logical fallacy should embarrass any credentialed scientific researcher. Seeking credibility for their essay by proclaiming their own brilliance is for Ms. Martin and Ms. Eisenberg nothing less than a sophomoric appeal to authority, namely their own.

Fallacious appeals to authority take the general form of:

• 1. Person (or people) P makes claim X. Therefore, X is true.

A fundamental reason why the Appeal to Authority can be a fallacy is that a proposition can be well supported only by facts and logically valid inferences. But by using an authority, the argument is relying upon testimony, not facts. A testimony is not an argument and it is not a fact.

To be clear, I know nothing about the careers of either Ms. Martin or Ms. Eisenberg, and, frankly, have no interest in knowing anything about them. Their curriculum vitae have exactly zero relevance upon the question of whether universal masking is an effective public health strategy or no. They both could be Nobel laureates and the relevence of their credentials would still be exactly zero, making their reference to their own credentials a legitimate but still fallacious appeal to authority (i.e., a fallacy of relevance).

Not every reliance upon the testimony of authority figures is fallacious. We often rely upon such testimony, and we can do so for very good reason. Their talent, training and experience put them in a position to evaluate and report on evidence not readily available to everyone else. But we must keep in mind that for such an appeal to be justified, certain standards must be met:

• 1. The authority is an expert in the area of knowledge under consideration.

• 2. The statement of the authority concerns his or her area of mastery.

• 3. There is agreement among experts in the area of knowledge under consideration.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, the simple fact is that there are no fewer than fifteen random controlled trials which argue against the idea that universal masking is an effective public health strategy. Thus one of the essential standards for reliance on their authority is demonstrably not met, as there is not “agreement among experts” regarding universal masking.

The essay goes downhill from there, indulging in blatant historical revisionism by suggesting that the research history on universal masking supports their contentions—it does not.

To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we and our public health colleagues have had to quickly revive and apply decades of evidence on respiratory virus transmission to chart a path forward. Over the course of the pandemic, epidemiologists have established with new certainty the fact that one of our oldest methods for controlling respiratory viruses, the face mask, remains one of the most effective tools in a pandemic.

Unfortunately for them, the actual history of the research on this point established with certainty that universal masking is not an effective tool in a pandemic, or at any other time. That was the case when I examined this question in 2020 and it remains the case today.

Who Needs Science When You Have Experts?

(Yes, I am beating another dead horse…but when corporate media keeps hawking this same discredited nonsense it is important to emphasize by repetition that the actual science on this point has not changed one bit).

Another of their fallacious arguments is the invalid (and disproven) extrapolation from the specialized environment of healthcare to the general environment of the public square.

Mask-wearing by health care workers has long been considered a primary strategy for protecting young at-risk infants from RSV infection transmitted in hospital settings. Scientific evaluation of the effectiveness of masks has historically been clouded by the fact that mask-wearing is often used in conjunction with other strategies, such as hand-washing. Nonetheless, the use of personal protective equipment, including masks, as well as gowns, gloves and possibly goggles in the health care setting, has been commonly associated with reduced transmission of RSV.

Even the WHO’s executive director of health emergencies Mike Ryan argued against universal masking as late as March of 2020.

Even as late as March 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised against wearing masks. 

"There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," WHO executive director of health emergencies Mike Ryan said Monday. 

If the argument is to be nothing more than a contest of credentials, surely Mike Ryan’s are a substantial counterweight to Ms. Martin’s and Ms. Eisenberg’s.

However, while there is research supporting the use of face masks in healthcare settings, the underlying data imposes some significant caveats which invalidates the extrapolation being made by Ms. Martin and Ms. Eisenberg.

As far as healthcare workers are concerned, Professor Krumholz' advocacy is backed up by scientific data. A 2011 study of 1,411 healthcare workers in 15 Beijing hospitals confirmed that wearing either surgical or N95 masks resulted in statistically significant lower rates of infection among healthcare workers. However, overall infection rates even among non-mask-wearing healthcare workers was only 9%, making extrapolation to the broader categories of first responders and retail workers problematic at best, particularly in light of the other four studies cited earlier.

The actual benefit of masking in the healthcare setting, while statistically significant, is far from overwhelming, which makes the extrapolation unwise at best and invalid at worst.

And I reiterate: this was the state of the science on masking in 2020. It is the state of the science today. Their arguments in favor of masking have never been a reflection of the extant research. Their assertion to the contrary is simply false.

Moreover, one of their own links to research presuming to support masking

¹

itself makes a critical error, by grounding the benefits of masking in its use during the 1910-1911 Manchurian plague epidemic in China.

Wu Lien Teh’s work to control the 1910 Manchurian Plague has been acclaimed as “a milestone in the systematic practice of epidemiological principles in disease control” (3), in which Wu identified the cloth mask as “the principal means of personal protection.” Although Wu designed the cloth mask that was used through most of the world in the early 20th century, he pointed out that the airborne transmission of plague was known since the 13th century, and face coverings were recommended for protection from respiratory pandemics since the 14th century (4). Wu reported on experiments that showed a cotton mask was effective at stopping airborne transmission, as well as on observational evidence of efficacy for health care workers. Masks have continued to be widely used to control transmission of respiratory infections in East Asia through to the present day, including for the COVID-19 pandemic (5).

The problem here is that the 1910 Manchurian Plague was an outbreak of pneumonic plague, which, like the more commonly known bubonic plague, is caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis.

Infectious respiratory diseases such as COVID-19 and other forms of Influenza-Like Illness are the result of viral infections (e.g, RSV, Influenza virus, rhinovirus/enterovirus, et cetera). Conflating bacterial and viral pathogens destroys the comparison, and makes the utility of masking against plague an invalid argument in favor of masking against infectious respiratory disease.

Moreover, Ms. Martin and Ms. Eisenberg mis-characterize the state of research on masking for schoolchildren by presenting as definitively established that the extant research shows masking schoolchildren is an effective mitigation against infectious respiratory disease. The reality is the research is hardly definitive, as there are multiple studies showing that masking schoolchildren is not an effective mitigation.

Breaking News: Mask Mandates Still Don't Work

All of which makes their essay a slipshod and ultimately erroneous statement of what “the science” actually says about universal masking.

This is the danger inherent in relying on credentials rather than facts and evidence to advance logical arguments, particularly in the realm of the sciences. As stated above, relying on credentials makes the argument testimonial rather than factual, and for testimony to be appropriate it must be relevant, and above all it must be honest.

Ms. Martin and Ms. Eisenberg’s essay fails on both counts. Their arguments in favor of universal masking fail on both counts.

The Conversation is a suitable venue for such virtue signalling tripe, as it is a place where self-anointed “experts” can indulge in self-congratulation over their expertise.

Scientific American, however, used to be about actual science, with more attention paid to facts and evidence and far less attention paid to personal egos. It saddens to see that is no longer the case.

1. Howard, J., et al. “An Evidence Review of Face Masks against COVID-19.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118, no. 4, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.201456411.