No randomized controlled trial (RCT), which is the gold standard for clinical research, has ever found that face masks have clinically meaningful benefits, much less saved lives. Based on a widely cited RCT in Bangladesh during the Covid-19 pandemic, some of its authors claimed in the New York Times that it shows mask mandates or “handing out masks” at public events “could save thousands of lives each day globally and hundreds each day in the United States.” In reality, the authors excluded the all-cause mortality data that could prove or disprove that very claim — in violation of their own pre-analysis plan. In addition to this breach of research ethics, they employed tenuous statistics and unrealistic assumptions to extrapolate the conclusion that masks save lives.