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from
DailySceptic Website
To summarize the story, the 2006 protocol for the Cochrane review on 'Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses' - known formally as A122 - and the previous versions drew little interest despite being co-published in the BMJ twice.
The 2009 BMJ version drew - all of - three comments.
For the 2020 update, things changed radically:
As we have documented, Cochrane grandees delayed the publication, added unprecedented layers of scrutiny, demanded the insertion of unnecessary statements, failed to publicize the review and undermined its content with an accompanying Editorial and Feature.
Archie Cochrane's agenda and the precautionary principle were turned on their respective heads. As a consequence, the approach to evidence was shifted back to the 1970s.
Following 'the Science' meant ditching an evidence-based approach.
As the panic spread, policies had to be justified - enter the models and the laboratory studies that followed in the seven-month gap while A122 was delayed.
The rapid review topics were duplicates of the interventions A122 had assessed since its inception in 2006.
The situation further escalated when the 2023 version was published.
Six weeks after publication, the Editor in Chief, "blindsided" by an op-ed, undermined the credibility of the Cochrane review.
Without any consultation with the twelve authors of A122, an apology for the review findings was issued to the world, stating that the shop window of the A122 review had been badly written and effectively took responsibility for other people's misquotes of the text.
Here is the text of the communiqué as a reminder:
The text contains several incorrect and political statements:
To smooth all this, a costly consulting firm has been hired to serve as a mediator.
We've published hundreds of peer-reviewed publications in probably over 100 journals and hundreds of news articles in the mainstream media.
Carl Heneghan has been an Editor-in-Chief, yet we've never seen an editor call in the mediators - have any of our readers?
Such an opposing position to discredit authors and underplay the content is hard to justify. The more prolonged the negativity exists, the worse it gets for the authors and for the many working on the other Cochrane reviews.
A122 dams the flood of poor quality evidence that reigned in the pandemic.
It needed to be removed or neutralized as it didn't fit the narrative, come what may. Yet, it has been the main rallying point of those who either had other views or believed in evidence-guided policy.
One of the immediate consequences of the communiqué and attacks (more later) was the much-publicized misleading statement to the U.S. Congress by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, then CDC Director, who claimed that the review had been retracted.
Sorry, Dr. Walensky,
Another curious aspect concentrates on the shop windows:
It's almost as though some folk making the decisions haven't read the full review.
But has the minimizing and discrediting strategy worked?
This was sent to us this morning by one of our subscribers:
So A122 is number one in Cochrane reviews and currently has the 14th highest attention score of nearly 24.5 million other research outputs.
But no author should be singled out for discussing the content of his or her research.
The silence of science is a worrying phenomenon, as is the refusal of the NYT to correct past mistakes.
As authors, we have sought clarification of the actions - so far.
Organizational implosions can occur when there is a mismatch between the forces acting on those at the lower rungs of the organization than those at the top.
This mismatch has drawn the attention of investigative journalists and other researchers who recognize the mismatch in the power dynamic undermining the publication of a high-quality, evidence-based review.
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