Astudy falsely implied the Amish suffered more deaths because they eschewed public health guidance. But correcting the record proved nearly impossible.
In 2021, I reported on my national television program, Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson that the largest Amish community in the US, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had rejected masking, vaccines, isolation, testing, and all the other CDC recommendations for Covid…and apparently fared none the worse for having done so.
The story was of such high interest that even after it aired on TV, it racked up millions more views online.
This attention to the Amish approach and its apparent success obviously didn’t please public health officials and industry advocates who were heavily pushing different narratives. They wanted the public to believe that anyone who wasn’t socially distancing, staying home, getting vaccinated, shutting down the works, and taking government-favored prescription drugs were putting themselves and others in grave danger.
As the revelations about the Amish made international headlines, there appeared to be a propaganda-driven effort to make it seem as if the Amish actually suffered far worse than everyone else for having failed to follow CDC’s advice.
A study was published entitled: “Closed but Not Protected: Excess Deaths Among the Amish and Mennonites During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” It appeared in the Journal of Religion and Health on June 11, 2021.
But I noticed serious flaws with the study and decided to challenge it. Among the problems I saw:
1. For their study population, the researchers grouped together a sample of Mennonite and Amish—even though Mennonites typically followed CDC guidelines while the Amish did not.
2. They excluded the largest Amish population in the US in Lancaster, the one that was actually the subject of the news reports.
3. Their study headline was at odds with what their own data showed: even with their skewed sample, the Amish fared no worse than the rest of the US for not having shut down.
After examining the study, I tried to get further information to determine if corrections were warranted. Among other things, I wanted to know:
- Who were the peer-reviewers who had signed off on a deeply flawed study?
- What did the actual study notes and data show about why the most obvious study sample population was excluded?
- What were some of the internal communications before and after publication?
With scientific studies, all the data is supposed to be available for public review and replication for obvious reasons. Studies aren’t considered scientifically valid without this kind of transparency. And, in many cases, we actually own the data because our tax money paid for the study—or some of it— or pays the salaries of some of the people involved.
Keep in mind that a study is generally treated as scientifically valid only when it meets: reproducibility (others can obtain the same result from the same data and analysis) and replicability (a separate study with new data yields a consistent result) standards. Obviously, if study funders and authors keep their full data and analyses secret, the standards can’t be applied. (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Reproducibility and Replicability in Science, 2019)
