There is a problem, where people link to and discuss the preprints of studies as though they are definitive and determinative of the science. I'm not a scientist, but my understanding is that preprints are rough drafts: they often have quality problems, and they haven't gone through peer review to guard against those problems. (Relevant article from January: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/01/20/pandemic-brought-new-attention-preprints)
People circulate the preprints on social media; usually they will highlight whatever pieces of the findings confirm their opinions. The preprints get received as "the science" by the non-scientists. None of us consuming all these quick summaries of the preprints have time to follow up and read all the final papers that come after the preprints. Meanwhile, the scientists have their own confirmation bias, and certainly many of them active on social media are campaigning for a specific set of Covid policies.
I do talk about this a bit with students when I discuss the peer review process (which could have been another section above, but wasn't). The main thing I try to dispel is that "peer review" means someone repeated your experiment. Most assuredly it does not! It just means a few people hopefully doing similar work read it over, didn't see any obvious errors, maybe made some suggestions and thought the paper was worth publishing.
But tied into that discussion is the fact that peer review as slow (may very well take months to complete), and there might be many reasons you want to get your work out faster, and so you might seek to "avoid" the peer review process at least temporarily (all these pieces you see "pending peer review") or even permanently.
There is a problem, where people link to and discuss the preprints of studies as though they are definitive and determinative of the science. I'm not a scientist, but my understanding is that preprints are rough drafts: they often have quality problems, and they haven't gone through peer review to guard against those problems. (Relevant article from January: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/01/20/pandemic-brought-new-attention-preprints)
People circulate the preprints on social media; usually they will highlight whatever pieces of the findings confirm their opinions. The preprints get received as "the science" by the non-scientists. None of us consuming all these quick summaries of the preprints have time to follow up and read all the final papers that come after the preprints. Meanwhile, the scientists have their own confirmation bias, and certainly many of them active on social media are campaigning for a specific set of Covid policies.
I do talk about this a bit with students when I discuss the peer review process (which could have been another section above, but wasn't). The main thing I try to dispel is that "peer review" means someone repeated your experiment. Most assuredly it does not! It just means a few people hopefully doing similar work read it over, didn't see any obvious errors, maybe made some suggestions and thought the paper was worth publishing.
But tied into that discussion is the fact that peer review as slow (may very well take months to complete), and there might be many reasons you want to get your work out faster, and so you might seek to "avoid" the peer review process at least temporarily (all these pieces you see "pending peer review") or even permanently.