Early Covid-19 research is riddled with poor methods and low-quality results

> Science depends on a slow, thoughtful and meticulous approach to data collection, analysis and presentation, especially if it intends to provide information to enact effective public health policies.

There's a balance here. Some studies that take almost a decade can be of lower quality than some replicating studies that only took a year or two to conduct. It really depends on the researchers themselves, not the time.

Then comes the "grace under pressure" idea of the threat of a pandemic. This of course requires swift research to get to any resemblance of answers to things like life-saving treatments and protocols.

Of course early COVID-19 research was sloppy. That's the very human nature of it and looking back upon it is simply unfair to the mass uncertainty humanity shared.

> For example, researchers have known for decades that for studies evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention, a control group is needed to know whether any observed effects can be attributed to the intervention.

This point requires nuance. People's lives were at stake. That's why so many studies didn't require a control until later on in the pandemic. Interestingly there are adaptive models nowadays where if results are found fast enough, treatments can be offered to the placebo group instead of the outdated method we use today.

Regardless, we learned a lot in a short period of time. Hopefully we see significant change in the practice to prepare us for the next major humanity crisis. Things like decentralized clinical trials, adaptive clinical trial arms, outcome-based research, and patient-led involvement can sincerely change how we approach science for many decades to come.

So what is a non-sciency person to take from the article's author? Hopefully, it's not "science cannot be trusted."

I've spent a lot of time on HN reading and learning -- mostly from those who comment. This has informed how I think about science. Not sure how other members of the public handle understanding the science of Covid, etc.

I think I know enough to understand that emergencies and disasters require things of us that everyday life doesn't. That doesn't get me to understanding science, but I now have some trusted resources I check with.

I think this is one of the few cases where the framing of the article is an understatement rather than an exaggeration.

A lot of what is mentioned there could be described more strongly as: "attempts to accelerate COVID research actually side effects that may have slowed down COVID research" This isn't just about how acceleration attempts lowered research quality as a side effect. it's about the paradox that trying to accelerate research may have been counterproductive.

Seems like the solution here should be to re-review all those studies, and for the ones found lacking ask the authors to address those deficiencies or withdraw the papers. Once that's been done then a meta-analysis can be done to find out whether the rushed research was helpful or harmful. There seem to be a lot of papers that are still preprints that were never reviewed at all.