Facebook fact-checking on mask article was flawed, spread misinformation: City Journal writer

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Facebook's fact-checking procedures are heavily flawed and spread misinformation themselves, the Manhattan Institute's John Tierney wrote on Monday after the social media giant flagged his article arguing mask-wearing harms children.

Facebook’s independent fact-checkers flagged Tierney's April article in the conservative think tank's City Journal about the risks of kids wearing masks, posting a disclaimer it was "mostly false." In the piece, Tierney argued masks were ineffective and even harmful for children by hurting their ability to develop linguistic skills and causing psychological damage, among other side effects.

"City Journal appealed the ruling, a process that turned out to be both futile and revealing," he wrote. "Facebook refused to remove the label, which still appears whenever the article is shared, but at least we got an inside look at the tactics that social media companies and progressive groups use to distort science and public policy."

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Facebook's appeals process did not use a neutral arbiter, Tierney wrote, but instead allowed the progressive fact-checker to be its own judge and engage in circular reasoning to justify why Facebook limited sharing of his piece. 

"This exercise obviously wasn’t about accuracy. The fact-checkers were actually fact-blockers," he wrote.

Tierney's report cited a study by a team of researchers in Germany who established a registry for parents to discuss the effects of mask-wearing on their children, but Science Feedback, which purports to be independent, fact-checked and said the study was self-selective and flawed. It labeled Tierney's article "Unsupported" because it couldn't establish a causal relationship between mask-wearing and hurting children.

"Any study can be faulted for methodological shortcomings, but that doesn’t mean its results should be ignored or suppressed, particularly when the findings are consistent with a large body of evidence from other researchers," Tierney wrote, noting another team of German researchers who wrote in a peer-reviewed article there was "statistically significant evidence of what they termed ‘Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome.'"

The World Health Organization and UNICEF both recommend children under five years old not wear masks, but Science Feedback cited the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that youths playing sports outside and even as young as two don the face coverings.

Tierney acknowledged in his article some of the shortcomings of the German study and said City Journal's appeal of the Facebook ruling noted the fact-checkers had ignored countervailing voices on mask safety and efficacy. Yet Facebook allowed the fact-checkers to fact-check their own fact-check, he said, as Science Feedback responded and denied his appeal.

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Among its issues with Tierney's piece was his analysis of a Sweden study on a coronavirus outbreak there that found little difference in virus spread from unmasked children in classrooms and older students doing online instruction.

Science Feedback took issue and said, "This makes it seem as if mask-wearing is implemented primarily to protect kids or parents from dying or getting hospitalized. But in reality it is used to limit the spread of the disease in the population, control the epidemic, and prevent the death of individuals at risk."

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"To the extent that I can make any sense of this objection, it seems that the fact-checkers at Science Feedback believe that the unmasked schoolchildren were infecting large numbers of Swedish adults while miraculously leaving their own parents unscathed. And I’m the one guilty of 'flawed reasoning'?" Tierney wrote.

Tierney added the fact-checking outlet had generally upheld progressive orthodoxies on issues like climate change and public health. 

"I didn’t see anything that would have displeased the journalists and officials promoting lockdowns and mask mandates," he wrote upon studying dozens of their other rulings.

One of its previous fact-checks deemed former President Donald Trump's October claim of an imminent coronavirus vaccine "inaccurate" and said "widespread Covid-19 vaccination is not expected before mid-2021."

However, multiple coronavirus vaccines began to be rolled out in December, and as of May 2021, more than half the U.S. adult population has received at least one dose of a vaccination. 

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Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said Facebook's censorship was damaging to public trust in science.

"Science depends on dissent, free speech, open debate. Yet in the name of science, they're actually censoring those tools of the scientific method itself," he told "Fox & Friends" Wednesday. 

Fox News' Stephanie Giang-Paunon contributed to this report.