Redundancy in reporting on COVID-19.

Dear Editor,

Additional to the problems described very well by Dr Ioannidis, there is another issue that became highlighted during this pandemic: redundancy in research and reporting. Redundant articles repeat already known information and are mostly published just for the sake of publishing.

By searching through PubMed, one can easily see that the number of publications related to COVID‐19 is growing exponentially (Figure 1). Many articles are being hastily and noncritically published, contain repetitive or inaccurate information, illogical and non–evidence‐based recommendations, and are highly biased. The following are some of the examples:

Figure 1

Number of publications (y‐axis) retrieved in PubMed from 1 January to 31 March 2020 (using search terms coronavirus OR covid‐19 OR Wuhan‐2019‐nCoV OR SARS‐CoV‐2), shown by 10‐day intervals (x‐axis). Exponential growth approximates the function f(x)=82e0.38x (correlation coefficient r = 0.994). Most common publication types are descriptive studies/patient series, reviews and editorials, and the majority of publications originate from China and the USA, followed by Italy and other European countries

an article published in a top surgical journal that advised avoiding sharp injuries in the operating theatre, and postulated that coronavirus may spread through electrocautery vapour (based on a laboratory experiment on HIV particles in vapour formed by electrocautery that was refuted 30 years ago);

over 250 reports on chest computed tomography (CT) findings in COVID‐19 patients, including several reviews and development of various predictive scores. All articles basically concluded the same that chest CT in COVID‐19 patients shows findings common in viral pneumonias and that it is not possible to discriminate COVID‐19 pneumonia from other viral pneumonias. It is also worth noting that the same pulmonary CT scan findings were reported in patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 ;

study on certain antiviral agent efficacy in COVID‐19 patients, designed, conducted and written by the sponsor, without control group and without clearly stating how the patients were selected among those who fulfilled the inclusion criteria ; and

development of various prediction models for COVID‐19 that mostly confirm and reinvent already well‐known predictors of poor outcome in patients with respiratory failure. A large review concluded that all of those articles are of low quality, poorly reported and highly biased.

When this pandemic subsides, we could use this situation as a motive to reduce redundancy in publication, to modernize the way data are presented and to avoid the same issues when the new pandemic arrives.

Besides strictly adhering to critical reasoning and scientific method, reporting could be enhanced by, for example, (a) summarizing information through living online articles that function as an administrated (edited) message group updated by any researcher who has relevant information, and (b) by modifying research reporting to avoid lengthy narratives: one regularly updated review could replace multiple repetitive introductions in research articles, researchers could report only methods and results, and discussion should be formalized, bulleted and linked to reader responses.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Both authors state that they have no conflict of interest.