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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Earlier this month, when the biotech firm Human Longevity published a controversial paper [pnas.org] claiming that it could predict what a person looks like based on only a teeny bit of DNA, it was just a little over a week before a second paper [biorxiv.org] was published discrediting it as flawed and false. The lightening speed with which the rebuttal was delivered was thanks to bioRxiv, a server where scientists can publish pre-prints of papers before they have gone through the lengthy peer-review process. It took only four more days before a rebuttal to the rebuttal [biorxiv.org] was up on bioRxiv, too.

This tit-for-tat biological warfare was only the latest in a series of scientific kerfuffles that have played out on pre-print servers like bioRxiv. In a piece that examines the boom of biology pre-prints, Science questions their impact on the field. In a time when a scandal can unfold and resolve in a single day’s news cycle, pre-prints can lead to science feuds that go viral, unfolding without the oversight of peer-review at a rapid speed.

“Such online squabbles could leave the public bewildered and erode trust in scientists,” Science argued. Many within the scientific community agree.

Should Scientists Be Posting Their Work Online Before Peer Review? [gizmodo.com]

[Source Article (PDF)]: THE PREPRINT DILEMMA [sciencemag.org]

What do you think ??

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