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COVID-19 researchers need claims to be scrutinized by qualified experts in order to spend less time and energy correcting misinformation or misleading information.
COVID-19 researchers need peer evaluation of research to acknowledge the gaps in our understanding of COVID-19 in order to promote more open research discourse and avoid discourse that prematurely tries to assess the validity of claims.
The user RexxS on Wikipedia talks about the rapid increase in demand and supply of research articles is a subject of insufficient sourcing
There are two factors at work: first, the rapid increase in articles about COVID-19 coupled with editors' desire to keep up with the latest news meant the article rapidly evolved and often used insufficient sourcing; and secondly, the huge public interest in research meant a lot of effort was made to expand the Research section. There is an argument that our reporting of research isn't subject to the same strict sourcing requirements that biomedical claims need. In other words if we say in the Treatment section "Xyz drug reduces mortality by 25%", that's going to need a high-quality, secondary source. If we say in the Research section that "Xyz drug is being trialled as a means of reducing mortality, and a large study by Smith and Jones suggested that some early results were encouraging", then we probably don't need more than the primary source as evidence that it took place and that the researchers made that observation on the results. Of course, if we get a good secondary source that discusses Xyz drug, then we use that and drop the primary. I hope that makes sense. --RexxS (talk) 20:24, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
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The user RexxS on Wikipedia talks about the rapid increase in demand and supply of research articles is a subject of insufficient sourcing
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The user RexxS on Wikipedia talks about the rapid increase in demand and supply of research articles is a subject of insufficient sourcing
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