Opinion | How to Identify Flawed Covid-19 Research Before It's Too Late - The New York Times

"Researchers have responded to the challenge of the coronavirus with a commitment to speed and cooperation, featuring the rapid sharing of preliminary findings through “preprints,” scientific manuscripts that have not yet undergone formal peer review. We are thrilled that researchers have embraced preprints, which are making new ideas, data and discoveries about the pandemic available to scientists and the public in almost real time. An example is the work of Bhamar Mukherjee and her team at the University of Michigan, whose research modeling the Covid-19 outbreak in India helped guide that government’s lockdown policies. But the open dissemination of early versions of papers has created a challenge: how to ensure that policymakers and the public do not act too hastily on early studies that are soon shown to have serious errors...."