As COVID-19 swept across the world, scientists scrambled to learn as much as they could about the new disease and share their findings with policy-makers and the public.
Many researchers shared their work on preprint servers before it had the chance to undergo the lengthy peer-review process required before research is published in academic journals.
The practice was intended to quickly make available potentially critical information about a deadly, fast-spreading virus so it could inform public policy decisions.
However, as Ross Upshur, a professor and bioethicist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, points out, preprint articles can sometimes be misleading because they haven’t been thoroughly vetted by other researchers.
Continue reading at University of Toronto.
Image via Dalla Lana School of Public Health.