Preprints and More Chaos
The public doesn't understand preprints — nor do we, actually — and it’s causing societal stress
Earlier this week, I wrote about the chaos of retractions.
Add to this the chaos of preprints, which is highlighted in a . . . preprint. I wouldn’t cover it, but Nature News did, and in a way that only adds chaos.
The preprint suggests that 14,000 preprints on arXiv have been withdrawn over time, and sought to categorize the reasons. Nature News covered it, with the headline:
‘WithdrarXiv’ database of 14,000 retracted preprints launches
Then, in the same story, an expert has this to say:
Jodi Schneider, an information scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, who has also studied retractions, warns against conflating preprint withdrawals with scholarly retractions.
Yet, Nature News’ headline writers conflated them perfectly. Nice job, headline writers . . .
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