Here& #39;s a post on the value and hazards of scientific preprints during Covid, from Science Media Centre.

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/what-should-press-officers-advise-on-preprints-during-a-pandemic/

I">https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/what-shou... HAVE THOUGHTS. brief thread...
During the peak of the first wave we urgently preprinted the world& #39;s largest ever study on factors associated with death from Covid-19, in over 17 million patients. This is still the world& #39;s largest ever study. 2 months later, it& #39;s soon to be published. https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/1258372975004389379?lang=en">https://twitter.com/bengoldac...
It& #39;s right that we went through a laborious peer review process for the final archive version to be published in a journal; it& #39;s also right that we preprinted the paper so people could see it swiftly...
We wanted ppl to understand which diseases and demographics were most strongly associated with death from Covid-19 to inform thinking about shielding, risk management, and other research on factors associated with covid death. The analysis didn& #39;t change hugely during peer review.
Does that mean peer review is a waste of time? Absolutely not. But peer review does not divide papers into "good" and "bad": that is a simplistic world view. positive peer review is at best a risk factor for quality, it is no guarantee..
Lots of terrible papers get published after passing through peer review. As everyone will say on this topic: the Surgisphere papers were all positively peer reviewed but very flawed. (Sometimes good papers struggle or get delayed by e.g. hostile reviews from competitors)
But more than that, papers aren& #39;t "good" or "bad" by some universal kitemark standard. The self-same study can be fatally flawed for one interpretative purpose, but still be very informative on other issues. And that leads us on to the bigger point...
I& #39;ve tried to help democratise access to the skills and knowledge needed to understand scientific research. I& #39;m a massive fan of *everyone* having ready access to the scientific literature. But that doesn& #39;t mean that the scientific literature is "written for everyone". It& #39;s not.
The academic literature is a "buyer beware" market, these are technical documents for professional people to read judiciously. It& #39;s the readers job to spot the flaws, as well as reviewers and editors.
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