Report: “Preprints Often Make News. Many People Don’t Know What They Are”

From Science:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints—unreviewed manuscripts posted online—were an important venue for biomedical researchers to quickly share findings with colleagues that might help curb the disease. At the same time, some scientists worried about whether and how to responsibly convey these unvetted findings to a public desperate for information.

Two recent studies support this concern. Even after reading a news article about preprinted findings that acknowledges they are unreviewed—a practice media organizations adopted for some stories during the pandemic—many nonspecialist readers don’t understand how a preprint differs from a journal article. And being told the findings came from a preprint doesn’t affect how credible the reader finds it.

The new analyses do not cast doubt on the value of preprints, which continue to be a popular way for scientists to quickly share results with colleagues before the findings appear in a journal, emphasizes Alice Fleerackers, a co-author of both studies and a social scientist at the University of Amsterdam. “Lots of preprints are fine,” she says. “Some are arguably better than many journal articles.”

Still, as social psychologist Tobias Wingen of the University of Hagen notes, “With the increasing prominence of preprints in scientific communication, it is essential to know whether nonscientists can grasp this concept.” The results from Fleerackers’s work “are both intriguing and concerning,” adds Wingen, who has performed similar research but was not involved in the study.

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