UBS Debates: What Did the Massive Bangladesh Masking Study Really Find?
Dr. Jason Abaluck and Dr. James Lyons-Weiler trade viewpoints in this UBS Debate.
Prompted by a challenge by Steve Kirsch, Dr. Jason Abaluck and Dr. Lyons-Weiler agreed to compare notes on Dr. Abaluck’s study on masking in Bangladesh. What do you think Dr. Abaluck is safe in concluding? Leave a comment, and as always: Help defeat censorship by sharing across social media!
Recorded 4/3/2022, first aired 4/4/2022.
More detail here:
James, I am sure this is important stuff that I want to know. But I will never listen to a podcast as is true of many readers here. Wrong format for us and fundamentally far to inefficient. Most sites to which I have whined have found auto-transcribers for their podcasts which, while not perfect, are good enough. They generally post the transcription with the podcast which is wonderful for all communities of learners, visual or aural.
I hope you can do this. Many of your peers on Substack do this already and it is most appreciated.
Thanks for the good things you are doing. I cannot wait to read this particular dialog, frankly.
Abaluck has a really good point at 17:50, "Well, hold on hold on hold on holelelelele."
His apologia for the "masks were working" headline is pure semantic illogic. If a study finds that trucks can carry logs but cars not so much, then the headline "automobiles could carry logs all along!" conveys a meaning (all automobiles can carry logs) that is contradicted by the study. "Some" ≠ "All," and "All" is the default implication of a sentence when a modifier is not added to the subject.
Sad and embarrassing that he can't see how flimsy his own counter-argument is here. But spend enough time in a cult and you forget what real debate consists of.
I was visited by a stranger with family in the FDA a few weeks ago, and the conversation went the same way. If I said severe outcomes from infection were rare, I was told to understand that that is not how I "have to think of it." The same way Abaluck thinks you are "misunderstanding" his study, as in thinking about it in a way different than how he thinks you "have to think about it."
It's a train wreck, really - hard to keep watching. I hope he gets around to specifying what the denominator was for the seropositive rate.