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Animal Ethics Biosafety Human Research Ethics Research Integrity

Opinion: In Defense of Preprints – The Scientist (Richard Sever & John Inglis | November 2021)

Posted by Dr Gary Allen in Research Integrity on December 29, 2021
Keywords: Institutional responsibilities, Journal, Publication ethics, Research integrity, Research results, Researcher responsibilities

The Linked Original Item was Posted On December 11, 2021

An academic using laptop for digital publishing.

In response to two November 2021 articles in The Scientist that called out preprints as a source of medical misinformation, the cofounders of bioRxiv and medRxiv say it’s not the publishing model that’s at fault.

A recent article by Michael Mullins in The Scientist and an accompanying editorial by the publication’s editor-in-chief point to the dangers of disseminating un-peer-reviewed biomedical research in the form of preprints. Both contain factual inaccuracies and misunderstandings.

We are big fans of preprint as a publishing model.  To address the elephant in the room, yes it has been abused by charlatans and cheats, it has also been used to add an academic veneer to crazy and dangerous theories.  Some of which have been forestalled by the peer review and editorial processes of traditional journals.  But some of the flawed work is published by traditional publishers and it can take many years (if not decades) to correct the problem .  The advantages of the preprint model are not insignificant.  Such as the democratisation of knowledge, the rapidity of distribution and transparent error correction.

The Mullins article cites a medRxiv preprint by Didier Raoult and colleagues on hydroxychloroquine as an example of the danger. Hydroxychloroquine was widely used to treat COVID-19 early in the pandemic, in part out of desperation and in part because it was championed by influential figures such as then–US President Donald Trump. The article implies that this was due to the medRxiv preprint. In fact, Raoult made his findings public on YouTube and his institution’s website prior to posting them on the preprint server. Moreover, the manuscript was rapidly published in a peer-reviewed journal, the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, that very same day, March 20, 2020, as Mullins points out. It was this journal article, and not the preprint, that was specifically highlighted by President Trump in a tweet dated March 21, 2020.

There are two important lessons here. First, the universal availability of the internet and social networks mean that this type of information can be easily disseminated independently of preprints. Second, peer-reviewed journals may not effectively function as gatekeepers: Raoult’s paper was published after alleged peer review despite its flaws and, as of today, still has not been retracted. Preprints provide an opportunity for the scientific community to discuss new work, and indeed many researchers pointed out the flaws in the Raoult manuscript in medRxiv’s comment section and elsewhere. Additionally, the “more-sober analysis” Mullins refers to showing “HCQ has no proven role” was itself a preprint posted to medRxiv in July 2020.

Opinion: In Defense of Preprints
In response to two November 2021 articles in The Scientist that called out preprints as a source of medical misinformation, the cofounders of bioRxiv and medRxiv say it’s not the publishing model that’s at fault.

Related Reading

(UK) “Positively Disrupt(ing) Research Culture for the Better”: An Interview with Alexandra Freeman of Octopus – Scholarly Kitchen (Rick Anderson | August 2021)

(EU) How pandemic-driven preprints are driving open scrutiny of research – Horizon (Rex Merrifield | April 2021)

‘Broken access’ publishing corrodes quality – Nature (Adriano Aguzzi | June 2019)

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