Carol Zink: Do all your homework before passing along information to others

To The Daily Sun,

Regarding Patrick Wetmore's letter regarding a Stanford study on the lack of efficacy of face masks. Please do your fact checking. The author of that debunked study is not affiliated with Stanford, usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/24/fact-check-study-falsely-claiming-masks-harmful-isnt-stanfords/7353629002:

Stanford School of Medicine spokeswoman Julie Greicius said in a prepared statement that Stanford supports the use of face masks to control the spread of COVID-19. The study "is not a "Stanford study,'" she said. “The author’s affiliation is inaccurately attributed to Stanford, and we have requested a correction.”

Vainshelboim (the author of the study) has not had any affiliation with Stanford since 2016, “when his one-year term as a visiting scholar on matters unrelated to this paper ended,” Greicius said. She did not provide additional details about Vainshelboim’s time as a visiting scholar.

The article appeared in the journal Medical Hypotheses, which its publisher says has the purpose “to publish interesting theoretical papers.” David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who writes about medical misinformation, told The Associated Press the journal publishes “fringe science and hypotheses.”

Medical Hypotheses looks like a repository for "out-there ideas," said Tara Kirk Sell, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University and a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

“There should be a place for dissent in the scientific community," said Sell, associate editor of the journal Health Security and lead author of a report about combating misinformation about COVID-19. "The problem is it looks like conservative media is taking this as a study that says and proves this finding. That’s not what this is.”

Carol Zink

Holderness