WATCH: The Face Mask Debate

Digi-Debates is a website and youtube channel which hosts online academic debates on important topical issues of the day. Their latest edition, Vol 7, was titled “The Mask Debate” and originally live-streamed on Friday the 24th of July and moderated by Petar Josic, the producer.

We encourage you all to visit their website and follow their youtube channel and their twitter.

The Resolution

With mandatory masking being enacted by governments around the world, in an attempt to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, many questions have surfaced as to whether or not these measures work. What do you think?

Do public mask mandates help curb the spread of the virus?

Affirming the Resolution

David Kyle Johnson is a professor of philosophy at King’s College (PA), who specializes in (among other things) logic, argumentation, philosophy of science, and the refutation of pseudoscience. And he also he maintains a blog for Psychology Today, called “A Logical Take,” where he routinely identifies fallacious arguments and debunks pseudoscience.

You can read his full bio here and his written response to Dr Rancourt’s work here.

Negative to the Resolution

Denis Rancourt holds B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. (University of Toronto) university degrees in physics. He has been a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada international post-doctoral candidate in prestigious research laboratories in both France and The Netherlands. He became a national NSERC University Research Fellow, in Canada. He was a professor of physics at the University of Ottawa for 23 years, attaining the highest academic rank of tenured Full Professor.

You can read his full bio here, and his paper “Why Masks Don’t Work”, here.

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