In the last months, one of the first randomized control trial study on masks entitled "NORMALIZING COMMUNITY MASK-WEARING: A CLUSTER RANDOMIZED TRIAL IN BANGLADESH" was published first as a NBER paper https://www.nber.org/papers/w28734 then as a Science article: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069
Newspapers and media outlets from all over the places celebrated it with titles such as: "We conducted the largest study on masks and covid-19: They work" - Washington Post "Surgical masks reduce COVID-19 spread, large-scale study shows" - Stanford Medicine News "First randomized trial on masking affirms efficacy, Yale study says" - Yale News "Huge, gold-standard study shows unequivocally that surgical masks work to reduce coronavirus spread" - Live Science
However, is the methodology and the data contained in the paper adequate enough to back such claims? Together with Pat Flynn we discuss the major flaws of this study and raise some concerns on the way the media misrepresented it for political purposes.
Additional reads: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/bangladesh-mask-study-do-not-believe
