The authors of a paper claiming that children’s masks trap concentrations of carbon dioxide higher than allowable standards in Germany have responded to critics who said the study was plagued with poor methods and unreasonable conclusions.
As we reported earlier this week, the corresponding author of the paper, Harald Walach, had his affiliation with Poznan University in Poland terminated because of a different paper he had co-authored, in the journal Vaccines. That paper has been retracted.
In the response, which we’ve made available in full here, Walach and his co-authors on the masks paper in JAMA Pediatrics write that
The measurements, we contend, are valid and were conducted by individuals with high content expertise.
Responding to a comment that
First, this is written by individuals with known bias against masks and other non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID, as well as vaccinations. The lead author is a psychologist with no training pertaining to this area of research.
the authors say that “arguments ‘ad hominem’ are the worst kind of arguments, but that
It is true that we were skeptical regarding the usefulness of such masks. But skepticism is a good precondition for studying a phenomenon. We suggest the authors of this comment apply their own skepticism against our results and conduct a better study. The lead author (HW) has ample experience with all kinds of experimental and clinical trials and about 200 peer reviewed papers to his name.
They continue, in what seems like an echo of the comment they are criticizing:
A quick perusal of Pubmed shows, that none of the authors of this comment are senior enough, nor do they have a wide range of publications to their name to be able to judge the competence of our team.
They also write:
We are glad the bell has rung. The next step would now be to prove us wrong by a study which is at least as good as this one and adds perhaps some features, such as long term measurement and blood oxygenation after a longer period of mask wearing to prove what is currently an unproven statement namely that prolonged mask wearing is harmless. It is likely not, and we have given a reason by valid experimental measurement.
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Calling an argument an ad hominem, and then following it up by a personal attack is really something.
We urgently need such kinds of investigations. Our department applied for a study about effects and side effects of masks as well, but our design is much more complex, so it takes unfortunately much more time, so, we welcome this version of a study as a short communication including all the limits, but starting to study, what we are demanding from us and our children! Thank you very much!
my instincts tell me that the journal editors simply invited preferred reviewers. Handling editors are now often burned out and not keeping an eye on the content in their queue, just drop-kick inviting preferred reviewers. This leads to dangerous consequences, and I appreciate sites like that highlight the problem of doing your editing job while asleep.
I see all kinds of junk coming through peer review, and have witnessed lay friends I know googling then citing them – e.g., as proof they need not get vaccinated, and can instead seek “homoepathic immunization” – This article was published and retracted by a Springer journal, but still appears in PMC under National Public Health Emergency Collection *without a Retraction Flag.* (and its been cited)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10389-020-01305-z w
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7272237/?back=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fclient%3Dsafari%26as_qdr%3Dall%26as_occt%3Dany%26safe%3Dactive%26as_q%3Dhomeopathic+vaccine+for+COVID-19%26channel%3Daplab%26source%3Da-app1%26hl%3Den
It’s really hard to trust PMC or PubMed anymore. They need to tidy up the articles in their inventories. There have been one too many crappy articles in them.
The response to science with politically incorrect undertones is nauseatingly predictable. Unfortunately so are the responses to the critics.
Simple response. If you don’t like the study or the outcome, let’s redo the research together.
Note: Does exhalation produce a high CO2 in the mask? Heck yes, we are getting rid of CO2. Does the high CO2 environment persist? Nope. The moment you inhale it goes away. Results are from a not really scienttific never-to-be-published inquiry by scientists who offered me a beer if I would be their test subject.
The good thing about the publication records is that anyone can look into Harald Walach’s supposedly unflawed publications (PubMed retrieved 125 for “Harald Walach”[AUTHOR] and out of the first 20 every fourth was purely editorial such as comments on other studies or replies to comments). I’ve only published about a dozen papers – and I do not count replies to LTTE’s or criticisms of others published papers in that sum…
The only thing he has been able to accomplish in the responses for the two publications recently entertained by RW is that he lacks a scientific mindset and toolbox.
W.H and co-authors had to resort to appeal to authority fallacy to defend their work. They couldn’t even explain why their methodology is valid. Pseudo scientists need to be kept away!
This is not about Walach. JAMA is supposed to be a reputable journal and I expect to be able to trust what’s published there (excepting honest errors, mistakes, and non-obvious deliberate fraud of course). While I can think of several ways how masks adding flow resistance might raise blood content, their dead volume is essentially zero and there is *no* conceivable mechanism by which they can alter the composition of inhaled air. (The fibres homoepathically retain a “memory” of carbon dioxide and transmit that to the fresh air, perhaps?) What is peer review worth if they miss the blindingly obvious?
How many unexceptional and humdrum results are just as wrong and skew the literature? Both my fathers diploma and doctoral dissertations were replications of recently published unexpected results and both were shown to be wrong and the reason for the error explained. (I.e. he first confirmed the raw results and then explained them.) Why don’t universities do that any more?