5/n Previously, this estimate entirely relied on an incorrect meta-analysis that showed that every extra year of schooling reduced your risk of death by 25% over your entire lifespan This has been removedpic.twitter.com/gNMoGSb6eu
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16/n But this brings us back to the results. Either missed days of schooling cost 0.8 (0.1-2.4) million YLL or 13.8 (2.5-42.1) million YLL Why the massive divergence?pic.twitter.com/RgPgiyDoRY
17/n Well, if you use the incorrect estimates from Mazumder/Lleras-Muney, you get an average of a 45% reduction in RELATIVE RISK OF DEATH AT EVERY AGE per year of schooling This is hilariously implausiblepic.twitter.com/Mt8CSd9t4T
18/n For context, this would mean that adding 3 years of schooling for every child would reduce their risk of death to literally 0% for the rest of their lives, effectively rendering them immortal
19/n The authors justify this with some dubious language about how US studies are more similar than Nordic ones, despite the fact that the US studies are based on legal changes in 1919 and 1939, at which time the US was (for example) still segregatedpic.twitter.com/5aLTJeV05C
20/n It is also very strange that the authors are happy to use evidence from an Argentinian study on children markedly different from those in the US but balk at studies on European children It seems an obvious contradiction
21/n Nevertheless, what we now have is a study that, weirdly, says that either school closures have cost very few YLL or a wildly absurd overestimate, depending on whether you limit your analysis to only the studies that the authors prefer arbitrarily to usepic.twitter.com/jCRTXAJtzq
22/n Many of the other obvious flaws in the paper remain uncorrected, and I'd urge you to read our full critique if you're interested:https://osf.io/9yqxw/
23/n That being said, it is worth saying that the authors and journal have at least taken ~some~ action here, and correcting the mathematically impossible model is a good first step for this paper
24/n My hope is that now we can further correct the other obvious mistakes and issues, and come to a more realistic estimation, because this paper is currently impacting policy on an international scale And it is still simply wrong
25/n I also think it's worth noting the process it took to get this paper corrected even this far The original response from the lead author and journal editor was, to quote exactly, "you are not right just because you think you are"
26/n This was after @ikashnitsky and I pointed out that the paper was MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE
Quite a worrying way to respond
27/n After we published our preprint critique, and it was reported on in the Guardian, we were told to submit a comment on the piece as soon as possible online and they'd get back to ushttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/08/coronavirus-study-that-found-us-school-closures-cut-life-expectancy-criticised-by-epidemiologist …
28/n Two months after the initial emails, and over a month after we submitted the comment, we have this correction published Unfortunately, the study has already had an enormous impact, and changed lives across the world
29/n You will probably be interested @stephaniemlee @MelissaLDavey @apsmunro @DrZoeHyde @devisridhar @DFisman
30/n Overall, what we have is a paper where the mathematically impossible results have been removed, but is still flawed in numerous ways and useless as evidence for decision-making
31/n The sad fact is that the approach the authors took, if implemented correctly, probably would not have found that school closures cost more YLL than COVID-19
32/n This DOESN'T MEAN that school closures are a good thing, necessarily, but YLL is a measure inherently geared towards measuring people who have already died, and it's just not likely that closing schools has cost so much of this metric
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