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A new Review on physical interventions against respiratory viruses is making the rounds. The review focuses exclusively on and finds that in the entire scientific literature, there are 78 studies with a bearing on the various questions asked. (1/n)
doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006

Based on what I have seen during the pandemic, many people poorly equipped to interpret this sort of selective summary because they rely on a type of default thinking:

Pick a hypothesis that wins by default (e.g. a specific physical intervention is harmful/non-beneficial). Then once new studies become available, check if they give a strong and rigorous enough reason to reject the default; if not, keep the default. (Similar to how, in a court of law, the accused is by default innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty.)

This can be contrasted with a more Bayesian way of thinking:

No hypothesis wins by default. Decide on some initial degree of belief in a hypothesis and its negation. Carefully weigh new evidence for an against and incrementally update the degrees of belief. (2/n)

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In the summer 2021, I collected a lot of literature on this and wrote up some thoughts. Much of it applies to the reception of the latest 's summary too.
intemittdefault.wordpress.com/

(3/n, n=3)

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Found an interview with the lead author of the review. He is a good example of someone engaging in default thinking:

"[...] it's a complete subversion of the ‘precautionary principle’ which states that you should do nothing unless you have reasonable evidence that benefits outweigh the harms."

maryannedemasi.substack.com/p/

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