ArticlePublic understanding of science (Bristol, England)2022
Reporting preprints in the media during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article in Public understanding of science (Bristol, England), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Research on New Methods of Topic Mining and Topic Prediction for Medical Preprints on Emerging Infectious Diseases.Cureus · 2025Article
- Public understanding of preprints: How audiences make sense of unreviewed research in the news.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2025Article
- What Lessons can Be Learned From the Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic?International journal of public health · 2025Review
- From impact metrics and open science to communicating research: Journalists' awareness of academic controversies.PloS one · 2025Article
- From Mary Shelley to Netflix: a Pan-European perspective on public communication of neuroscience and neurotechnology.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Using an expert survey and user feedback to construct PRECHECK: A checklist to evaluate preprints on COVID-19 and beyond.F1000Research · 2023Article
- Changes in health communication in the age of COVID-19: A study on the dissemination of preprints to the public.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Science in motion: A qualitative analysis of journalists' use and perception of preprints.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Preprints have gained prominence in the dissemination of scientific findings. This development has been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to require the rapid dissemination of new scientific information. However, since preprints usually have not undergone peer review, they lack the rigour of other scientific publications such as journal articles. This presents a challenge for the news media tasked with keeping the public informed about the latest scientific developments in the context of great uncertainty during a global pandemic. This research note investigates the reporting of scientific information from preprints in 80 news articles identified in news articles related to COVID-19 published in four South African online media outlets. Our results show that despite the publication of guidelines for reporting on preprints in the media, there is still a way to go regarding the judicious use of scientific information from preprints by the news media.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.