I am qualified to judge a scientific paper, but I don't think this should be a personal judgement call of who the "better expert" is. I am trying to avoid calli

I am qualified to judge a scientific paper, but I don't think this should be a personal judgement call of who the "better expert" is. I am trying to avoid calling to authority when deciding an objective truth. On this topic a reasonably intelligent person reading a reasonably well written scientific paper can understand its strengths and weaknesses. It is not that complicated, we would be talking about simple counts: X people were enrolled, Y people got infected with masks Z people infected without masks. Yes there is statistics involved, there are corrections to be made, proper tests to be chosen, but at end we are talking about a few integer numbers and their relationships. We are not discussing the unsolved mysteries of quantum chromodynamics. If you look at the information for multiple vaccine papers the data is detailed, granular, compelling and evident - even though I could not design or perform the same analysis myself. There is no debate there that it works. Yet there is no similarity in the data robustness or even availability when it comes to effectiveness of masks. I believe that there are no RCT studies on masks that would support their benefits. The Cohran review that I linked on the state of the field also comes to the same conclusion.