Instituto Nacional de Comunicação Pública da Ciência e Tecnologia, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz. Av. Brasil 4365, Manguinhos. 21040-900 Rio de Janeiro RJ Brasil.
Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz. Rio de Janeiro RJ Brasil.
Cien Saude Colet. 2022 Mar;27(3):957-968. doi: 10.1590/1413-81232022273.20512021. Epub 2021 Nov 24.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the pace of science. Many scientific data are published on preprint repositories, prior to peer review, which raises questions about the credibility of the information not yet validated by other scientists. We analyzed 76 stories published from January to July 2020 by three newspapers (The New York Times - USA, The Guardian - UK and Folha de S. Paulo - Brazil), having as topic studies on COVID-19 published on preprint platforms. The objective was to analyze how the media covered non-peer-reviewed research, in countries marked by conflicting discourses prompted by the denialist attitude of their government leaders. The results show that the newspapers did not provide a detailed explanation of what a preprint platform is, how the process of publishing research results works, and the implications of a study that has not yet been peer reviewed. The analysis also reveals how these news outlets were guided by the anxiety from an unknown disease, focusing on research on drug trials and seroprevalence. The study leads us to reflect on the challenges and weaknesses of covering fast science and the need to broaden the public's understanding of the methods and processes of science.
新冠疫情加速了科学的发展。许多科学数据在经过同行评审之前就已经发布在预印本存储库上，这引发了人们对尚未经过其他科学家验证的信息的可信度的质疑。我们分析了 2020 年 1 月至 7 月期间，三家报纸（美国《纽约时报》、英国《卫报》和巴西《圣保罗页报》）发表的 76 篇关于预印本平台上发表的 COVID-19 研究的报道。分析的目的是探讨在一些国家，由于政府领导人的否认态度引发了相互矛盾的言论，媒体是如何报道未经同行评审的研究的。结果表明，这些报纸没有详细解释什么是预印本平台，研究结果的发表过程是怎样的，以及一项未经同行评审的研究的意义。分析还揭示了这些新闻媒体如何受到未知疾病的焦虑所引导，重点关注药物试验和血清阳性率的研究。这项研究让我们反思了报道快速科学的挑战和弱点，以及拓宽公众对科学方法和过程的理解的必要性。
