[LINK] r/Physics: ethics of putting out a preprint outside our immediate area of expertise during a major public health crisis

[Tom Worthington]

On 3/4/20 9:57 pm, Glen Turner wrote:

> ... ethics of putting out a preprint outside our immediate area of
> expertise during a major public health crisis ...

The papers referred to are in arxiv.org which provides drafts of 
scientific papers. These have been approved by a moderator, but not yet 
through the peer review process. The intention is to get preliminary 
results out quickly.

Arxiv, and similar pre-print repositories, are not intended for the 
general public, but as they are open access anyone can read them. The 
problem is that the average person, or journalist, will be impressed by 
the scientific language and graphs, and not understand that the content 
had not been checked completely.

I have seen at least one paper on COVID-19 which looks, on the face of 
it, to be of value. But this was from a team of engineers and 
epidemiologists.

The criticism of the authors of the papers I suggest is misdirected. The 
fault is with the process. Criticism should be with the moderators who 
allowed these papers to be published, and with the process, which should 
require more rigor. Perhaps more than just a single moderator is needed. 
If any member of the scientific community really thinks a particular 
paper is a danger to the community, they can criticize the authors 
publicly, or make a complaint of unethical conduct.

Anyone who has reviewed scientific papers knows the flood of dross they 
get: assignments from students, work which has already been published, 
papers off topic, stuff cobbled together from the Wikipedia, and 
material which is from people well meaning but don't know what they are 
doing. It is a routine part of the process to reject all this stuff. 
However, this is getting increasingly difficult, and I expect we will 
see more use of automated tools.


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Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP IP3P http://www.tomw.net.au 
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