Newspaper removes flawed study that claimed to show face masks harmed children

A recent paper that the suggested masks may be unsafe for children to wear has now been retracted. IThis is the second pandemic-related study written by the lead author to be withdrawn from publication in less than a month, following the withdrawal of another article claiming to show that covid-19 vaccines would kill almost as many people as they would save.

The study was published June 30 in JAMA Pediatrics as a research letter titled: “Experimental Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Content in Inhaled Air With or Without Face Masks in Healthy Children: A Randomized Clinical Trial”. Its main author was Harald Walach, a clinical psychologist in Germany.

Walach and his colleagues claimed to show that children who wore face masks for just a few minutes had higher than safe levels of carbon dioxide in their bloodstream, possibly because the masks trapped the exhaled air in the mask that the children Based on their own research and that of others, they further argued that “children should not be forced to wear face masks.”

The study was quickly criticized for a variety of reasons, including the use of a possibly inappropriate measuring device to measure carbon dioxide levels near the mask. and the lack of other relevant data, such ass actual levels of oxygen in the blood. Worse yet, the JAMA study was published literally the same week as Walach’s previous article on vaccine safety. retracted for similar neglect of the data, but only after strong criticism from other scientists, including editors of the same journal where it was published. Barely two weeks later, Walach’s second article met the same fate.

“Following the publication, many scientific questions were raised regarding the methodology of the study”, the editors of the journal wrote in the retraction note now accompanying the study. As for the other paper, the authors were given the opportunity to make their case, but “did not provide sufficient convincing evidence to resolve these issues.”

Walach’s misfortune, if you want to call it that, does not end with these two studies. In the fallout of the first retraction, PoKnown university in Poland finished its affiliation with Walach, stating that the vaccine study “used data in a misleading manner to draw false and potentially harmful conclusions to the public.”

Retractions are a healthy part of the scientific process and are not always or even usually indicate a criminal act on the part of the researchers. But Walach had acquired a reputation for unscientific crank long before the pandemic, having already been crowned Pseudoscientist of the Year in 2012 by the Austrian Society for Critical Thinking for his research on alternative medicine and telepathy. It is therefore worth wondering how Walach, who also seems to have no relevant experience in studying vaccines or face masks, was able to publish these terrible studies in two separate journals without any red flags being issued. ‘appears.