Was the study bogus?

Reading the article (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/12/mask-gui...) from the Atlantic that this article is truncating as well as the original study (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7039e1.htm?s_cid=mm...) you might find that the Atlantic article presents the following arguments towards the point that the study has serious flaws, they are as follows:

1. The author (David Zweig) points to https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/school-mas... as proof of skepticism about the costs and benefits of mandating that children 2-12 wear masks in school. That article begins with the statement "The potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools." but ends with the statement "Do the benefits of masking kids in school outweigh the downsides? The honest answer in 2021 remains that we don’t know for sure." The author has failed to present a coherent thesis for their skepticism, and as it reads it appears that their view actually softens by the end of the piece.

2. David Zweig begins their second critique of the Arizona study with, "This estimated effect of mask requirements—far bigger than others in the research literature—would become a crucial talking point in the weeks to come." yet this is a fundamental misread of the study that happens often in science reporting. They study actually says, "In the crude analysis, the odds of a school-associated COVID-19 outbreak in schools with no mask requirement were 3.7 times higher than those in schools with an early mask requirement (odds ratio [OR] = 3.7; 95% CI = 2.2–6.5). After adjusting for potential described confounders, the odds of a school-associated COVID-19 outbreak in schools without a mask requirement were 3.5 times higher than those in schools with an early mask requirement (OR = 3.5; 95% CI = 1.8–6.9)." This is not a causal statement, it is a correlative one. This is to say that the study does not make the point that the mask mandates cause reduction in covid outbreaks, but that those schools with mask mandates clearly experience fewer outbreaks. This conflation is made many times throughout the rest of the article. It matters because, like most science, the study adds to our understanding of reality, and if we misunderstand the science it's likely we are misunderstanding reality.

3. Jonathan Ketcham is quoted, at first without an actual point, as saying: "You can’t learn anything about the effects of school mask mandates from this study". This isn't really an argument so it's interesting that it's made it into the an article on the science section of the Atlantic. It also shows that Jonathan Ketcham may have conflated causation and correlation as well. Without naming them or providing any other attribution, the article then makes an implicit argument from Ketcham's quote: "His view echoed the assessment of eight other experts who reviewed the research, and with whom I spoke for this article. Masks may well help prevent the spread of COVID, some of these experts told me, and there may well be contexts in which they should be required in schools. But the data being touted by the CDC—which showed a dramatic more-than-tripling of risk for unmasked students—ought to be excluded from this debate." So the experts interviewed all agreed that masks "may well help prevent the spread of covid" and that there "may well be contexts in which they should be required in schools", but the data in the study we are citing should be excluded from the public discourse. To me, this section requires a lot of brain twisting work. The experts (even those critiquing this study) say masks help (this is not a may well statement). The experts say we might want to mandate masks in schools. But for some reason, this study that finds some valid correlations shouldn't be talked about in the public debate. I find this nonsensical considering the article that wants the public to not use this research in debate must use the research to achieve its goal. If the author really wanted that data to go away it should be doing what any good scientist would do, which is more science. Get some more data, show that the models presented by the study are in fact wrong.

4. Noah Haber is quoted as saying that the research is, "so unreliable that it probably should not have been entered into the public discourse." Great quote for a science article. It's got a lot of information to sink your teeth into. At this point in the article I find that I'm very annoyed by the lack of actual science reporting. It mostly reads as shit stirring to me.

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