Orwellian Science During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Let us call Orwellian Science that in which the research or reports state an opposite or disconnected conclusion with respect to the reported data.

• June 16, 2020 - Lyu and Wehby in Health Affairs: Community Use Of Face Masks And COVID-19: Evidence From A Natural Experiment Of State Mandates In The US¹⁾
  • The use of fask masks is judged in this study according to negativity of the second derivative of the infection curve (which necessarily goes negative) during a brief period during the first wave of the pandemic in the U.S. which first reached different geographies at different times.²⁾
  • Commentors at the published study noted other problems.
• Aug, 2021 - Yeh and Contreras (preprint): Full vaccination against COVID-19 suppresses SARS-CoV-2 delta variant and spike gene mutation frequencies and generates purifying selection pressure³⁾
  • The data in the paper shows exactly the opposite of the title and conclusion claims.⁴⁾
  • The tweets saved to the preprint are a sad, but entertaining historical record of doctors and scientists uncritically tweeting out the paper to their subscribers.