Exposing Zeynep Tufecki - Activist, Journalist, Scientist? Who is She, Really?

The answer - she's whatever the situation requires when it comes to taking credit, or in evading responsibility.

Prior to a few months ago, I had taken little or no notice of this person.

Meet Zeynep Tufekci, a New York Times columnist and sociologist, and, as of 2021 - Columbia professor of journalism. On her Twitter bio - Zeynep claims to expansively cover issues relating to “Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more.”

Zeynep has made a bit of a splash since the pandemic was first declared (along with worldwide lockdowns, mandates, mask mania, school shutdowns, and all that) - and particularly since last March.

Zeynep blasted back into the public consciousness after the release of the highly anticipated & long-awaited January 2023 update to the Cochrane Collaborative’s meta-study review of RCTs on community masking (which I commented on here).

Most recently, Zeynep waded back into the Cochrane controversy herself, publishing the following opinion column in the New York Times, with the bombastic title “Here’s Why the Science is Clear that Masks Work”:

The article release was almost immediately paired with this Tweet from Zeynep, announcing the following:

zeynep tufekci @zeynep

NEWS: Cochrane says lead author of a mask review misrepresented its findings, apologizes for summary statement that was imprecise and says they will update it. They say their review did NOT find masks don't work. Plus, I examine the actual evidence. nytimes.com/2023/03/10/opi…

For some inside baseball - the Karla Soares-Weisner noted above, actually had nothing to do with the actual meta-study research on masking released by Tom Jefferson’s team.

Soares-Weisner was simply a high-level admin, according to reporting by Paul Thacker at the “Disinformation Chronicle”. Jefferson reported she “blindsided” them (the authors), by issuing a bizarre “apology” for the Cochrane’s public statement on the masking meta-study, and by promising to edit their public statement.¹

In Zeynep’s own words, above, she noted that the Cochrane authors “did not find masks don’t work.” That’s right - this was the basis of the “apology” that was extracted from the Cochrane administrative staff.

Does the language above seem a bit…. strange…. and somewhat… well…. oddly *stilted* in the context of your understanding of what scientific endeavors are generally geared for?

Like, this isn’t how people talk about science?

If so, you’re not alone.

We’ve all heard the phrase “you can’t prove a negative” - or the related axiom - “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

These phrases illustrate the fundamentally problematic issue with definitively proving a negative assertion (like, can I *really* prove that invisible gremlins aren’t really the cause of gravity? or can I really prove that rabbits feet don’t work?).

Put another way - this is something science is fundamentally not geared to deliver on.

In fact - this is Philosophy of Science 101 - something a true “SciComm” (Science Communicator), or science journalist would be able to easily communicate to their audience and fans - instead of obfuscating at every turn.

I highly recommend you listen to the following 16 minute discussion between Tom Jefferson, lead author of the Cochrane mask meta-study , and Carl Heneghan, the director of the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, where they discuss the language-policing controversy surrounding the mask meta-study.

In it, Tom and Carl deliver a crystal-clear primer on the nature of efficacy and effectiveness research in EBM (Evidence Based Medicine) and give a perfectly reasoned defense of the statement “the Cochrane meta-study proves that masks don’t work.”

Open season on mask evidence

The Big Controversy

Remember in 2020, when the CDC reversed its masking policy from recommending no masks - to suddenly recommending masking from everyone from two years old and up?

Well, we now have evidence of a catalyst - it was actually the New York Times’ own Zeynep herself (see below), by virtue of an opinion piece criticizing the CDC’s then-masking guidelines, and a now-infamous Tweetstorm, which was later credited with being the “tipping point” in the CDC reversing course and changing their “guidance” on mask recommendations - which led to mask mandates nationwide in public, in schools, in hospitals, and etc. (many of those mask mandates remain in place today).

Stinson Norwood @snorman1776

No wonder @zeynep is so keen on protecting masks. @ianmSC

The New York Times @nytimes

Zeynep Tufekci sounded an early alarm on the need for protective masks. But long before she became perhaps the only good amateur epidemiologist, she had quietly made a habit of being right on the big things, writes @benyt. https://t.co/MbhJ5VDEZ1

Since all of this came out, and in the ensuing controversy that resulted, Zeynep has been on a tear. She’s been mass blocking critics, and claiming all sorts of disqualifying, strained, and ultimately absurd, last-refuge-of-a-scoundrel reasons why she didn’t need to engage in any of her critics (because they are “antivaxers,” etc).

So What is Zeynep’s Deal, Anyways?

A lot of criticism of Zeynep Tufecki is that she is “not a scientist,” so therefore, she isn’t qualified as an expert on epidemiology, or more specifically, on the science of Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE.

She is, in fact, a published scientist. Dr. Tufecki is a trained sociologist, and has a fairly lengthy publication history:

First page of Google Scholar hits of Zeynep’s published works

As you might expect, aside from what appears to be a single review article in 2020 on masks², Zeynep’s publications are almost exclusively in the field of sociology, with a focus on studying the dynamics of online social change movements, and how narrative generation works online.

I’m not going to review any of Zeynep’s articles - but I want you to get a flavor of her “sociology” scholarship by, if you can take the time, reading this article by her in the MIT Technology review:

It’s a piece filled with aspirational and approving language about the role that social media played in the Arab Spring protests of 2010 and 2011, which were essentially widespread revolts against various governments in the Arab world at the time - although we now know they were fed pretty extensively by DoD & State Department meddling via social media (whether you approve or not - pic below is a screengrab from Twitter Files #8):

Zeynep then goes on to counterpose the lofty, approving language of the role social media played in the 2010-2011 uprisings in the Arab world with much more disapproving, dark, and cautionary language about the “free-for-all” and lack of “restraints” on domestic social media in the United States - and how it was exploited and led to the election of Donald Trump, of course.

(Unsurprisingly and tellingly - in the article she regurgitates the discredited “Russiagate” conspiracy theory).

She ends the piece arguing that “Ubiquitous digital surveillance should simply end in its current form” (italics added).”

But not, you’ll notice, for government - in fact, no where in the piece does Zeynep argue for restraint of government’s role in policing or intervening in social media, she simply deftly argues that the problem is social media companies themselves being unrestrained by government intervention.

See how that works?

Zeynep’s Expertise: Using Social Media to Astroturf Social Change Movements (and Cancelling Organic Ones)

She’s smart, and in fact in the MIT Review article above, she even talks about how social media can be a powerful tool to break down the role of “pluralistic ignorance” in keeping like-minded members of a political advocacy group isolated and alone.

While that’s true - it’s worth noting that the reverse is also true, which Zeynep knows very well.

In other words, just like social media can bring together social change and advocacy groups (like Arab Spring protesters), social media censorship, cancellation, and deplatforming can do the opposite. As, over the last three years, we’ve all seen very well.

So who is Zeynep Tufekci?

This is her:

Everyone remember Catherine Orr-Bueno?

Like her, Zeynep Tufecki is a so-called “disinformation expert.”

Her skillset, her rise to fame and influence, is entirely by dint of her ability to understand how to manipulate public opinion, to flout the rules of rational debate, maximize plausible deniability and minimize intellectual responsibility.

She’s a sociologist, a journalist, a scientist, and an activist whenever it suits her.

This is her shtick. These is her pattern. She’s all of these, she’s none of these.

So what motivates her?

It’s hard to say - I think on a global level, she’s like a lot of people who gravitate to positions of influence and power in media, she’s heavy on ambition but short on a moral core (yes, this is a common set of features seen in sociopaths).

In terms of masks - to truly understand Zeynep’s motivation, you need to understand how the whole masking campaign started, and look into some of her earlier writing with her #masks4all co-campaigner, Austrian data scientist Jeremy Howard, which was magnificently documented by San Francisco Attorney Michael Senger. In the article, Michael notes a very telling passage in the single, peer-reviewed article co-authored by Tufekci & Howard in PNAS

For Zeynep and Howard, it’s really not about the supposed properties of masks to prevent disease or mortality, because I honestly think on an inescapably intellectual level they both understand the evidence for their mask-advocacy is quite weak at best.

For them, enforcing mask-wearing is a “visible symbol and reminder of the pandemic” and that “signaling participation in health behaviors by wearing a mask as well as visible enforcement can increase compliance.”

Masks are a purely sociological project.

Conclusion

In my humble opinion, Zeynep Tufekci is a propagandist and a ghoul.

She simply serves the purpose of telling people in power what they want to hear - and dutifully dresses it up in the language of science (science rhetoric - or ‘scientism’). She needs them as much as they need her. She’s here to legitimize ideological allies, and delegitimize opponents (she seems to hate populists).

In the process of cementing her legacy and usefulness to the crumbling institutions she serves - she has done incredible harm to legions of preschoolers and children who have grown up in a sea of masks, as well as residents in my nursing home and elsewhere, who have not seen a face of a caregiver for over three years now (and counting).

Her propagandizing & scientism-rhetoric done from the massive pulpit afforded to her at the New York Times and on her Twitter platform has done immeasurable harm to these and others, has prolonged & magnified the socioeconomic harms caused by lockdowns, mandates, and other authoritarian measures employed in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The part that galls me the most is the damage she does to basic science literacy in her readers and fans in her quest to somehow retain her legacy. It’s petty, destructive social engineering for the sake of, I guess - ambition.

I’ll finish up (since this is a pretty lengthy article at this point) by pointing all of you towards some supplementary reading on Ms. Tufekci…. if you’re not completely sick of her yet!

References

How Zeynep Tufekci and Jeremy Howard Masked America

Unmasking the New York Times’ Zeynep Tufekci

Where US Mask Rhetoric Went Wrong

1. Since I began this article, apparently Zeynep’s behind-the-scenes armtwisting, documented by Paul Thacker at “The Disinformation Chronicle” and elsewhere has extracted yet another public comment on the article, this time from John Conly, one of the authors of the article, simply restating the same refrain as Soares-Weisner - e.g., ‘while the meta-study found no evidence community masking works, this doesn’t definitively prove it doesn’t work.’ Tufekci also claims this additional comment was incorporated into the original review - it wasn’t (it was added as a public comment attached to the full review). Very contradictorily - Conly claims to speak “on behalf” of the authors.

Yet the first author, Tom Jefferson, has been very vocally speaking out against the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” muddying-the-waters campaign of the likes of Zeynep, such as here, all over Carl Heneghan’s Substack “Trust The Evidence” substack, here, and finally - don’t miss UCSF’s Vinay Prasad interviewing Tom Jefferson and Carl Henghan here.

2. This review article (e.g., is neither an efficacy or effectiveness study on masks), published in PNAS in 2020, was first-authored by non-medical and non-clinically-trained computer scientist Jeremy Howard - if you want to read about his connection to Zeynep, please read Michael Senger’s excellent piece here.