An alternate view of that study which includes a comment

from one of the original co-authors takes a revised view of that study. Now, this article was written after the prelim, so maybe the authors modified something afterwards, but maybe not.

Excerpt:

Various news outlets seized on that extra 10 percent as evidence that neck gaiters don’t work and may even be worse than nothing. Such conclusions, which were sometimes supported in news stories by the authors themselves, are too strong for a study its authors describe as a “proof-of-concept.”

“We tried to be as careful with our language as possible in interviews,” says Warren S. Warren, a Duke chemist and coauthor of the study. While he says their observations suggest some thin gaiters might be problematic, “the press coverage has careened out of control” for a study testing a measuring technique and that looked at just one mask of each type.

Click here for link at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid19-neck