But this hasn’t stopped multiple news outlets from sharing it.
As Vice pointed out yesterday, the simulation was created by a team of Belgian researchers, who, remarkably, just shared it with reporters without any explanation on how the data was collected, or even before publishing a peer-reviewed paper. In fact, the team never even posted a non-peer reviewed paper.
The lead researcher on the simulation, Bert Blocken of Eindhoven University of Technology, has since defended his actions, telling Vice that “people should read and not misread my tweets and texts,” and that he “never and nowhere discouraged people from walking, running, or cycling. Rather the opposite. Maybe people should read more, and react less.”
However, as Vice stated, there is nothing to read, other than a very brief and extremely vague press release.
Of course, none of that matters in the current hyper-accelerated news cycle, and the simulation has since quickly spread everywhere, in part by a now heavily-debunked Medium post. But more than likely you probably saw the simulation via a national outlet like Fox News or Daily Mail, or even local outlets like WTVT and WFLA.
What’s disappointing is that most of these outlets are sharing the simulation as an uncontested fact. WTVT’s headline from yesterday stated “Simulation research shows COVID-19 can spread farther by those exercising outdoors,” and WFLA’s headline from today reads “WATCH: Simulation shows how single cough can spread coronavirus.”
At this point, experts aren’t exactly sure how coronavirus spreads through the air, and they’re also not sure that if you’re exposed to a droplet, it necessarily means you’ll be infected.
Like many industries, newsrooms have been absolutely gutted since the outbreak, leaving many outlets (like Creative Loafing Tampa Bay) with depleted staff and near zero resources. So, in some ways, it's easy to see how something like this could be published without a second thought.
However, there really is no excuse for researchers to bypass universally accepted norms to get a simulation like this out into the public. Since the coronavirus pandemic, many peer-reviewed studies have been published and have been released in a responsible manner, reports Vice.
But what’s most unfortunate is that the information presented in this simulation could indeed be useful, and maybe even accurate, but there’s no way for anyone to know right now. And, despite all this, it’s still being used as a model to suggest that maybe exercising outside is bad.
You can read Vice’s full report on why this simulation sucks, right here.
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This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2020.