The Covid-19 pandemic has seen a deluge of papers published by researchers around the world who are striving to understand and document the situation. The normal publishing process would not allow sufficient expediency to this process, so many papers have been published as preprint research that has not been peer-reviewed.
New research from Simon Fraser University highlights how seldom the media document such papers as preprint when covering them. The findings emerged after an analysis of over 450 stories covering preprint Covid-19 research from the medRxiv and bioRxiv servers between January 1 and April 30, 2020.
“We found that it wasn’t just newer, less ‘traditional’ media outlets, like Medium or Yahoo! News that did not accurately identify the research as preprint or preliminary,” the researchers say. “Even established publications like The New York Times and The Guardian did not consistently describe the preprints they covered as unreviewed.”
Unusual pressures
The authors believe that the coverage of these preprints in the media is perhaps a reflection of the unusual pressure on the scientific community to sacrifice rigor for speed.
“Just as researchers are adjusting to the new way of rapidly communicating among each other, so too are journalists figuring out how that greater uncertainty needs to be conveyed to the public,” they say.
Obviously, preprint research can still be useful to both the public and the scientific community alike, especially if it includes promising prevention strategies regarding the virus. It can, however, also work to undermine trust in the media if the research is mischaracterized as having undergone the usual checks and balances of peer review, especially if the research is later discredited.
“We saw this with a couple of high profile preprints published at the beginning of the pandemic, for example, which linked tobacco to COVID-19 prevention,” the researchers say. “These studies were highly flawed, but they got a ton of media coverage–sparking unnecessary panic and even encouraging some people to pick up smoking.”
The situation was compounded by the unique circumstances surrounding the early months of the pandemic, when few examples of best practice existed with the science evolving at a rapid pace. This was compounded by the general lack of scientific and medical background among many of the reporters covering the pandemic.
“Journalists have not had an easy year. All things considered, I’m impressed with what they’ve been able to accomplish despite the odds,” the authors conclude. “And overall, audiences seem to be responding well. Many countries saw a boost in news consumption during the early stages of the pandemic, and trust in journalism has been high.”
