Thread by @James_Townsend9

🧵FACE MASKS: HOW UNSCIENTIFIC SCIENCE IS MASKED AS “NEWS”🦠

New @cardiffuni research claims to show that mask wearers are more attractive than non-mask wearers.

Today, I’ll show you how dodgy data is used to influence public attitudes, & I’ll tell you EXACTLY how they do it👇🏻

So, on Thursday, Cardiff Uni published this news story on their website about a new scientific study suggesting “protective face masks make wearers look more attractive.”

It is framed around experts finding a “surprising new reason to mask up.”

Source: cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/2595…

Study co-author Dr Michael Lewis, from their School of Psychology, is quoted as saying: “We also found faces are considered significantly more attractive when covered by cloth masks than when not covered.”

As you can see, his profile* also lists himself as a “media commentator”.

Summing up his newly published research, Dr Lewis certainly doesn’t lack confidence in his scientific findings as he asserts: “The current research shows the pandemic has changed our psychology in how we perceive the wearers of masks.”

Noting the language used here is important.

Dr Lewis doesn’t say: “this research suggests that attitudes to mask wearing is/could be changing.”

He says it “has” changed — a definitive statement — based off the research he has jointly conducted.

A bold declaration to make, absolutely. It must be a robust piece of work.

So anyway, the news article, at around the same time it was published on the university website, would have then been distributed (via email) to a list of contacts in the media as a Press Release, by their in-house communications team.

And boy, did its dissemination land well💥

I’ve found coverage in 6 different countries: England, Wales, USA, Australia, Ireland, and India. And the coverage also spanned print, online, broadcast, & radio — the whole spectrum of earned media.

A resounding success for the Cardiff Uni team.

Here’s some of the UK coverage:

And here is some of the international coverage.

@USATODAY, @thehill, @IndiaToday, @IrishTimes, @theprojecttv, @WIONews, & others.

Or, as we call in industry, “a good spread.”

The headlines all scream in unison: face masks make you look more attractive — & The Science says so.

@GBNEWS broadcast the research to their growing audience, @talkRADIO gave it airtime, & @SkyNews framed their coverage most positively; and around those being previously reluctant to wear one “may change their minds” thanks to this academic discovery.
Sounds really credible, yes?

https://twitter.com/gbnews/status/1482251725432107011

It’s unanimous.
It’s unambiguous.

However, did any of the journalists actually read the published study?

Or did they simply open the emailed Press Release, see that it suited their agenda, & top and tail the information (a fancy phrase for doing v little) before publishing it?

Without physically being in all those newsrooms, let’s try to demystify that very question.

You see, firstly, let’s take a look at three of the UK papers vs the Cardiff University Press Release.

As you can see, the quotes from Dr Lewis are identical in each. Word for word.

In other words, as I hinted at earlier, no journalist actually spoke to Dr Lewis about his study before publishing the research.

They all, no questions asked, published his comments verbatim from the Release.

The rest of the media coverage is strikingly similar to the Release.

As a journalist, this immediately set alarm bells ringing for me🚨

• If they didn’t speak to the lead scientist, did they even read the study?
• If they didn’t read the study, how can they be sure what they’re reporting is correct?
• What if they missed some crucial context?

Call me old fashioned but I then did what the journalists *should* have done, and I read the actual study.

I’ve included it below. It’s not even a particularly long one (by usual journal standards).

I invite you to read it yourself. Why?

Source: …itiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.11…

Erm, well. How to put it politely? Because it’s not quite the groundbreaking study Dr Lewis, Cardiff University, and media en masse made it out to be.

For three key reasons:

1. Sample size of just 43 women is extremely small are therefore carries very little weight. This fact..

..is given in the media coverage, as it is mentioned in the Press Release.

However, what isn’t mentioned is:

2. Sample diversity. ALL 43 women are university students from the same course (psychology). All were between 18 and 24 and 93% were white. So, no diversity of sample.

And, more to the point, completely unrepresentative of the British population at large.

This wasn’t mentioned in any of the media coverage because — guess what — it *wasn’t* in the Press Release and none of them read the actual report.

But that isn’t the best bit. Oh no…

3. Almost hidden towards the very end of the study, is this little gem.

As there was no diversity in the extremely small sample, participants all showed “high levels of agreement” with both face masks:
1. being part of everyday life and
2. being effective in preventing COVID-19.

In layman’s terms, this study got an extremely small sample of pro-maskers to tell scientists that they found other pro-maskers attractive.

It’s like surveying @Guardian readers on the best UK newspaper and then running with the headline: “British people endorse the Guardian.”

Hardly groundbreaking, and hardly scientific.

Their own words: “This meant that investigating correlations of attractiveness differences with mask-wearing attitudes WAS NOT POSSIBLE.”

It’s not worth the paper it’s written on,and given the 3 factors above is highly manipulative.

Far from believing the population suddenly has a germ-ridden mask on their list of qualities for a new partner, these three screenshots rather tell a different story about people’s attitudes to mask-wearing in relation to attractiveness, don’t you think?

What we have here is a perfect storm and a failure on three fronts.

1. Why are scientists putting out v poor quality research and making out it speaks for the whole UK population?

2. Why are PR/Comms teams drafting Press Releases which omit *fundamental* pieces of information?

3. And, finally, why are journalists not doing their bloody job? Is it laziness, or something far more sinister?

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

But one thing is for certain, this manipulation of the public has to stop otherwise trust will be lost for generations.

ENDS

* I obscured Dr Lewis’ email as my intention has been to report the facts, not cause a pile on.

Thanks for reading & please RT to raise awareness!🙏🏻 JT #ThisIsNotJournalism #propaganda #COVID19 #Covid_19 #misinformation #censorship #coronavirus #MSM #fakenews #coronavirus #Covid