Scientific publications on COVID-19 ¿Is the evidence presented of high quality?
Publicaciones científicas sobre COVID-19 ¿La evidencia presentada es de alta calidad?
Abstract
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, scientific information has been increasing at a breathtaking speed. In the challenge of containing the advance of the COVID-19 pandemic, the research focused primarily on conducting clinical trials with the available pharmaco-therapeutic arsenal that would have shown mainly antiviral properties. Because of this, an avalanche of publications has produced significant attention in the scientific community that awaited a “magic bullet” to detain covid-19 and its main complication: the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). So far, attempts to find an effective therapeutic compound
have been unsuccessful. As a result of the pressure to publish quickly on COVID-19, the exaggerated information leads to the poor quality of the evidence. In this sense, it is necessary to differentiate the true evidence from the false information that could lead to potentially harmful decisions. Consequently, there is a potential to adversely influence the scientific and public discourses, resulting in confusion, poor political decisions, and public mistrust of science. This pandemic has shown, in the case of clinical trials, notable deficiencies in their design, determining that the research on COVID-19 is methodologically flawed and supported mainly by confusing and uncontrolled evidence. It is presumed that the pressure to obtain
rapid publications, points to the participation of researchers and the permissibility and lack of rigor of the journal editorial board; and involving also the ethics committees and the peer review process. In the absence of clinical decisions based on solid scientific evidence, there is a need for scientific publications on COVID-19 to be supported by a rigorous and explicit research process that will produce reliable and reproducible results.
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References
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