Category: Free Speech

Mainstream Media Suppresses Scientific Debate on Cochrane Meta-Analysis of Mask Efficacy

(p. A11) On Jan. 30, [2023] the Cochrane Collaboration, highly regarded for its rigorous systematic reviews, published an update of its meta-analysis of masking and other physical methods to prevent respiratory illnesses. It found no strong evidence for masking, and the initial media response was silence. After conservative media covered the study, the mainstream press went on the attack. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic and others piled on.

As an epidemiologist, I hoped the review might dent the politicized discourse surrounding masks and other prevention measures. I sent an article to Time magazine, which had recently published my work.

. . .

Eventually the editor . . . asked for some further changes, which I readily accepted. “I think we’re set,” he wrote. “My colleague will finalize and publish.” I heard nothing from him until two weeks later, when he finally confirmed Time had decided to kill the piece.

. . .

“Follow the science,” they said throughout the pandemic. You can’t do that if you suppress scientific debate.

For the full commentary, see:

Daniel Halperin. “Media Keep Stifling the Covid Debate.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 1, 2023): A11.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 31, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

The Cochrane meta-analysis mentioned above is:

Jefferson, T., L. Dooley, E. Ferroni, L. A. Al-Ansary, M. L. van Driel, G. A. Bawazeer, M. A. Jones, T. C. Hoffmann, J. Clark, E. M. Beller, and et al. “Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Jan. 30 2023).

For Musk, Buying Twitter “Needed to Be Done”

(p. A8) LONDON — Billionaire Elon Musk told the BBC that running Twitter has been “quite painful” but claimed the social media company is now roughly breaking even after he acquired it late last year.

In an interview also streamed live late Tuesday [April 11, 2023] on Twitter Spaces, Musk discussed his ownership of the online platform, including layoffs, misinformation and his work style.

. . .

After acquiring the platform, Musk carried out mass layoffs as part of cost-cutting efforts. He said Twitter’s workforce was slashed to about 1,500 employees from about 8,000 previously.

“It’s not fun at all,” Musk said. “The company’s going to go bankrupt if we don’t cut costs immediately. This is not a caring-uncaring situation. It’s like if the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job.”

Asked if he regretted buying the company, he said it was something that “needed to be done.”

For the full story, see:

Associated Press. “Musk says owning Twitter ‘painful’ but needed to be done.” Omaha World-Herald (Tuesday, April 13, 2023): A8.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 12, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

“The Reliability of Science Is Based” on Free Speech

Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli’s argument should be pondered by global warming and Covid scientists who want to censor and cancel those with whom they disagree. They should also read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.

(p. C5) Science is a process that builds upon existing theories and knowledge by continuously revising them. Every aspect of scientific knowledge can be questioned, including the general rules of thinking that appear to be most certain.

. . .

Consider a folk healer’s herbal medicine. Can we say this treatment is “scientific”? Yes, if it is proven to be effective, even if we have no idea why it works. In fact, several common medications used today have their origin in folk treatments, and we are still not sure how they work. This does not imply that folk treatments are generally effective. To the contrary, most of them are not. What distinguishes scientific medicine from nonscientific medicine is the readiness to seriously test a treatment and to be ready to change our minds if something is shown not to work.

Exaggerating a bit, one could say that the core of modern medicine is not much more than the accurate testing of treatments. A homeopathic doctor is not interested in rigorously testing his remedies: He continues to administer the same remedy even if a statistical analysis shows that the remedy is ineffective. He prefers to stick to his theory. A research doctor in a modern hospital, on the contrary, must be ready to change his theory if a more effective way of understanding illness, or treating it, becomes available.

. . .

What makes modern science uniquely powerful is its refusal to believe that it already possesses ultimate truth. The reliability of science is based not on certainty but on a radical lack of certainty. As John Stuart Mill wrote in “On Liberty” in 1859, “The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.”

. . .

There is no secure method for avoiding error. Our point of departure is always just the ramshackle, error-filled totality of what we think we know. But uncertainty does not make knowledge worthless. If our theory is contradicted by experiment, this remains a real fact, solid as rock, even if we don’t yet know with clarity where our mistake lies. The fact that the assumptions in our reasoning can be mistaken doesn’t change the fact that scientific reasoning is our best cognitive tool.

For the full essay, see:

Carlo Rovelli. “The Best Reason to Trust Science.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 11, 2023): C5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the essay has the date March 9, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Rovelli’s essay quoted above is based on his book:

Rovelli, Carlo. Anaximander and the Birth of Science. New York: Riverhead Books, 2023 (2011).

Mill’s wonderful defense of freedom, mentioned above, is:

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty and Other Essays, Oxford World’s Classics. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008 (1859).

Stanford Law School Associate Dean for D.E.I. Praises Students for Violating Free Speech of Federal Judge

(p. A15) Stanford Law School’s website touts its “collegial culture” in which “collaboration and the open exchange of ideas are essential to life and learning.” Then there’s the culture I experienced when I visited Stanford last week.

. . .

Before my talk started, the mob flooded the room. Banners unfurled. Signs brandished: “FED SUCK,” “Trans Lives Matter” (this one upside down), and others that can’t be quoted in a family newspaper. A nervous dog—literally, a canine—was in the front row, fur striped with paint.

. . .

When the Federalist Society president tried to introduce me, the heckling began. “The Federalist Society (You suck!) is pleased to welcome Judge Kyle Duncan(You’re not welcome here, we hate you!). . . . He was appointed by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Embarrassing!).” And so on. As I began, the heckling continued. Try delivering a speech while being jeered at every third word. This was an utter farce, a staged public shaming. I stopped, pleaded with the students to stop the stream of insults (which only made them louder), and asked if administrators were present.

Enter Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion. Ms. Steinbach and (I later learned) other administrators were watching from the periphery. She hadn’t introduced herself to me. She asked to address the students.

. . .

My “work,” she said, “has caused harm.” It “feels abhorrent” and “literally denies the humanity of people.” My presence put Ms. Steinbach in a tough spot, she said, because her job “is to create a space of belonging for all people” at Stanford. She assured me I was “absolutely welcome in this space” because “me and many people in this administration do absolutely believe in free speech.” I didn’t feel welcome—who would? And she repeated the cryptic question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

I asked again what she meant, and she finally put the question plainly: Was my talk “worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes?” Again she asserted her belief in free speech before equivocating: “I understand why people feel like the harm is so great that we might need to reconsider those policies, and luckily, they’re in a school where they can learn the advocacy skills to advocate for those changes.” Then she turned the floor back over to me, while hoping I could “learn too” and “listen through your partisan lens, the hyperpolitical lens.” In closing, she said: “I look out and I don’t ask, ‘What’s going on here?’ I look out and I say, ‘I’m glad this is going on here.’ ” This is on video, and the entire event is on audio, in case you’re wondering.

. . .

Two days later, Jenny Martinez and Marc Tessier-Lavinge, respectively the law school’s dean and the university’s president, formally apologized, confirming that protesters and administrators had violated Stanford policy. I’m grateful and I accepted. The matter hasn’t dropped, though. This week, nearly one-third of Stanford law students continued the protest—donning masks, wearing black, and forming a “human corridor” inside the school. They weren’t protesting me; I’m long gone. They were protesting Ms. Martinez for having apologized to me.

The most disturbing aspect of this shameful debacle is what it says about the state of legal education. Stanford is an elite law school. The protesters showed not the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse: That one must meet reason with reason, not power. That jeering contempt is the opposite of persuasion. That the law protects the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker. Worst of all, Ms. Steinbach’s remarks made clear she is proud that Stanford students are being taught this is the way law should be.

For the full commentary, see:

Stuart Kyle Duncan. “My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 18, 2023): A15.

(Note: ellipses added. In the original, the word “taught” is in italics.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 17, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Cochrane Study Finds No Benefits of Mandatory Masking

During the pandemic, I wrote an op-ed piece advocating the voluntary (not mandatory) use of masks. I still believe that, based on the mechanics of disease spread, and the mechanics of physically blocking virus particles, that masks can have a modest effect in reducing the viral load we spread to others. I also still believe in free speech and believe that it was wrong to censor those who were skeptical of masks.

(p. A19) The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.

“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”

But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?

“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.

What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?

“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”

. . .

These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.

No study — or study of studies — is ever perfect. Science is never absolutely settled. What’s more, the analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit at an individual level. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own.

. . .

The C.D.C.’s increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance is none of those things. It isn’t merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science — conspiracy theorists and quack-cure peddlers — by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify.

It also betrays the technocratic mind-set that has the unpleasant habit of assuming that nothing is ever wrong with the bureaucracy’s well-laid plans — provided nobody gets in its way, nobody has a dissenting point of view, everyone does exactly what it asks, and for as long as officialdom demands. This is the mentality that once believed that China provided a highly successful model for pandemic response.

For the full commentary, see:

Bret Stephens. “‘Do Something’ Is Not Science.” The New York Times (Wednesday, February 22, 2023): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Feb. 21, 2023, and has the title “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?”)

Energy Department Says Covid Came from Wuhan Lab

(p. A1) WASHINGTON — New intelligence has prompted the Energy Department to conclude that an accidental laboratory leak in China most likely caused the coronavirus pandemic, though U.S. spy agencies remain divided over the origins of the virus, American officials said on Sunday.

The conclusion was a change from the department’s earlier position that it was undecided on how the virus emerged.

. . .

Officials would not disclose what the intelligence was. But many of the Energy Department’s insights come from its network of national laboratories, some of which conduct biological research, rather than more traditional forms of intelligence like spy networks or communications intercepts.

Intelligence officials believe the scrutiny of the pandemic’s beginnings could be important to improving global response to future health crises, though they caution that finding an answer about the source of the virus may be difficult or even impossible given Chinese opposition to further research. Scientists say there is a responsibility to explain how a pandemic (p. A7) that has killed almost seven million people started, and learning more about its origins could help researchers understand what poses the biggest threats of future outbreaks.

The new intelligence and the shift in the department’s view was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday [Feb. 26, 2023].

For the full story, see:

Julian E. Barnes. “Energy Dept. Suspects Virus Was From Lab.” The New York Times (Monday, February 27, 2023): A1 & A7.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 26, 2023, and has the title “Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says.”)

Many Universities, Embracing DEI, No Longer Hire and Reward Based on Competence and Merit

(p. A13) Diversity is no longer a term to describe the breadth of our differences but a demand to flatter and grant privileges to purportedly oppressed identity groups. Equity assigns desirable positions based on race, sex and sexual orientation rather than character, competence and merit. Inclusion now means creating a social environment where identity groups are celebrated while those who disagree are maligned.

“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” [DEI]—the compound form of these modern concepts—is especially toxic. It divides us by social identity groups, ranks those groups on privilege and power, and excludes those who fail to honor the new orthodoxy. Rather than being equally endowed with innate dignity and fundamental rights as human beings—best judged by our character and not skin color—we are supposed to discriminate and confer status based on race, sex and cultural affinity.

. . .

When coming from the college’s administration, DEI practices essentially gatekeep entry to college faculty, staff and students. Requiring DEI statements as part of the faculty employment process dissuades those who think otherwise from even applying. It stifles discourse by keeping dissenting viewpoints from campus in the first place.

College DEI training programs discourage the open and candid discussion necessary for intellectual growth. They exacerbate divisions between groups, creating an environment of tension, fear and one-mindedness, and they have the pernicious effect of closing minds and shutting down thoughtful debate even before classes begin.

DEI attacks the integrity of the academic project. Instead of listening to divergent voices, ears are shut. Instead of the free expression of contrary opinions, chilling self-censorship takes place. Instead of a campus open to all, one finds a narrow doorway through which only an approved few may enter. If the right pieties and homilies aren’t made, ostracization and exclusion become the norm rather than the exception. Unanimity, inequality and exclusion—Orwellian indeed.

For the full commentary, see:

Matthew Spalding. “DEI Spells Death for the Idea of a University.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed abbreviation, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 10, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Brilliant, Courageous, Charming, WASP Publisher Defended Human Rights

(p. A24) John Macrae III, a dashing publisher who gambled on groundbreaking books and dauntlessly defended authors who defied injustices committed by their own governments, died on Feb. 1 [2023] at his home in Manhattan.

. . .

Mr. Macrae was among those who urged his fellow publishers to boycott the Moscow Book Fair in 1983 to protest the Soviet Union’s treatment of dissidents.

He flew to Poland with his stepson Nick and a portable folding kayak to navigate the Vistula River and meet with anti-government leaders undetected. He then met with intermediaries for Lech Walesa, leader of the outlawed Solidarity trade union, and persuaded him to write his autobiography.

Mr. Macrae also championed Salman Rushdie when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran in 1989 accused Mr. Rushdie of blaspheming Islam in his novel “The Satanic Verses” and enjoined Muslims to kill him.

“Jack traveled to Cuba and Iran on human rights missions,” Jeri Laber, a founder of Human Rights Watch, said, noting that in addition to making “several trips on his own to Communist Poland,” he traveled to Communist Czechoslovakia to meet with the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel, later to become the Czech Republic’s first president.

. . .

Amy Hertz, a former Dutton editor, wrote in The Huffington Post in 2010 that as a publisher Mr. Macrae “went after memoirs from apartheid South Africa and the end of the Cultural Revolution in China so that people would understand the suffering caused by lack of freedom.” And, she said, “he brought over the great Russian poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky, and he worked with them to get Russian dissidents released from prison.”

“Jack’s brilliance,” Ms. Hertz added, “and what he passed along to me, is in not worrying about what’s on the page you’re looking at when evaluating a proposal or a manuscript. His brilliance is in hearing the thinking behind the author’s words, inchoate in the holy mess that when I worked for him was usually spread across his office floor. He taught me to find that kernel and to burnish it.”

. . .

“He was probably the last of the old-time, gentleman WASP publishers — born into the business,” said Charles McGrath, a former editor of The New York Times Book Review. “He had immense personal charm, and it was hard not to get swept up by him.”

Late in life, Mr. McGrath added, “he found out he had multiple sclerosis, but didn’t let that slow him down. He zipped around the office — and the city, for that matter — in a motorized wheelchair, as cheerful as ever.”

For the full obituary, see:

Sam Roberts. “John Macrae III, 91, Publisher And Rights Champion, Is Dead.” The New York Times (Friday, February 24, 2023): A24.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Feb. 27, 2023, and has the title “John Macrae III, Eclectic Publisher and Rights Champion, Dies at 91.”)

Russian-Speaking Ukrainian Says When You “Have Felt a Whiff of Freedom . . . You Don’t Want to Go Back”

(p. A4) EASTERN Ukraine –— After a year of war, I remember most the things people said.

Svetlana, a woman in her 60s from Kharkiv, standing amid the press of refugees at a train station, explained why Russian-speaking Ukrainians like her, who had lived half their life in the Soviet Union, did not want to live under Russian control.

“We have felt a whiff of freedom,” she said. “After that, you don’t want to go back.”

For the full commentary, see:

Gall, Carolotta. “We Have Felt a Whiff of Freedom.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 25, 2023): A4.

(Note: on 2/27/23, I spent time searching for the online version of this article on the NYT web site and failed to find it.)

E.S.G.–“Extremely Silly Grandstanding”

Source of graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) E.S.G. — which refers to environmental, social and governance standards — has become a point of contention for red-state legislators defending the fossil fuel industries that employ their residents.

. . .

(p. B4) So what is E.S.G., anyway? As investors rename their firms and their funds in a race to ride the E.S.G. wave, cynics see the debate over the term’s definition as degenerating into everyone seeing gibberish. Because funds can define E.S.G. nearly any way they want, they have come to resemble an extra-strange goulash. Sometimes, these new or newly rebranded operations are just elegantly simple greenwashing and nothing more.

For the full commentary, see:

Ron Lieber. “YOUR MONEY; Bankers Are Suing Lawyers In Kentucky’s E.S.G. Battle.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 25, 2023): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 24, 2023, and has the title “YOUR MONEY; The E.S.G. Fight Has Come to This: Bankers Suing Lawyers.”)

Joyce Meskis Was the Principled Entrepreneur Behind Denver’s Wonderful Tattered Cover Bookstore

The Tattered Cover in Denver is my favorite bookstore. I remember one time as I was exiting, running into Scott Parris, then an economics editor at Oxford University Press, who would later be the acquisition editor for my Openness to Creative Destruction. I remember he asked me if I had seen any books in economics in the Tattered Cover that looked promising. On another memorable occasion I visited the bookstore with my daughter Jenny’s Montessori middle-school class as a bookend to the class’s trip to Estes Park. It is a large welcoming bookstore, with comfortable chairs, good coffee, and a wonderful and diverse selection of books. At least it was during the years that Joyce Meskis owned it. (It may still be–I have not visited for several years.)

(p. B12) In 1995 the writer A.E. Hotchner presented Joyce Meskis, owner of the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, with a PEN American Center award recognizing her efforts on behalf of freedom of speech and expression.

“In this room,” he said at the awards ceremony, “there are writers, editors, publishers, and the rest of you are readers. If this woman fails, we all fail. We don’t exist unless the bookseller can sell us.”

And that was before Ms. Meskis went all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court to prevent law enforcement officials from knowing what books one of her customers had bought.

Ms. Meskis, who built the Tattered Cover into one of the most successful independent bookstores in the country, died on Dec. 22 [2022] in Denver, the National Coalition Against Censorship announced.

. . .

In addition to creating a bookstore famed for its vast selection and bibliophile-friendly atmosphere, Ms. Meskis often took a stand in matters related to censorship and the First Amendment. Sometimes those positions were not easy ones to embrace.

. . .

To Ms. Meskis, owning a bookstore was about more than just sales. As she told The Arizona Daily Star in 1992, “It’s my view that as booksellers we have our own version of the Hippocratic oath — to maintain the health and well-being of the First Amendment.”

. . .

Her stances didn’t always involve government regulation and court battles. In the late 1980s, she vowed to continue selling Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses,” despite anonymous telephone threats after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran declared the book blasphemous and called for the author’s death.

. . .

If Ms. Meskis was celebrated for her First Amendment stands, she took that spotlight reluctantly.

“Trouble finds us, we don’t go looking for it,” she told Publishers Weekly, an oft-repeated line. “When you’re in a general community, you will always have challenges. There are things I didn’t expect. I didn’t expect so many court battles. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

For the full obituary, see:

Neil Genzlinger. “Joyce Meskis, 80, Bookseller Who Defended Readers’ Rights.” The New York Times (Thursday, January 12, 2023): B12.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Jan. 11, 2023, and has the title “Joyce Meskis, Bookseller Who Defended Readers’ Rights, Dies at 80.”)