In the early part of this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly around the globe, the international medical community was attempting to disseminate research as quickly as possible to educate an anxious public on an unknown virus and to advance treatments and ultimately, a vaccine. Social and traditional media featured an alarming amount of misinformation from non-scientific sources, which put even more pressure on journals to validate facts and deliver them as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, as the pandemic reached a fever pitch, research was publicized and then retracted when questions arose about inconsistencies where journals and reviewers were not provided with the full set of data against which to conduct independent checks. “The hasty retractions…alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process,” reported the New York Times.