Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Scientific Research

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has affected almost all aspects of people’s lives. Several businesses have taken the work-from-home approach, whereas many industries that need a more hands-on approach have either suffered greatly or undergone radical reprioritization of their aspects for survival. The research and publication industry is a complex mixture of both. Governments worldwide have imposed severe travel limitations and shut down of universities, research institutes, and laboratories, and we herein discuss why the seemingly “hands-on” research and publication industry is doing better than you would think.

ResearchGate conducted a survey to identify how researchers have been affected by the current pandemic. This press release briefly articulates important takeaways from the survey which had a staggering 3000 responders from around the world within 24 hours. Among the responders, 82% reported that their work has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, and 67% and 68% responders report working from home and spending much less time attending research-related events, respectively. These numbers are very likely due to movement restrictions. For a profession that is perceived as widely being very hands-on, 67% of researchers working from home is a very remarkable number.

This can be explained by the intricacies of this profession. Vetting and reading the existing literature on a topic for their upcoming research and writing papers on the research already conducted are two integral tasks of a researcher, and with movement restrictions in place, 45% and 43% of researchers reported prioritizing these tasks, respectively, to optimize the use of their time during the pandemic. Research in its essence is highly collaborative, and 43% researchers reported spending more time collaborating with other scientists, while 46% researchers reported keeping a closer watch on updates from and activities of other scientific institutions. A major economic impact of this pandemic that many employees of any industry have not been able to escape is job insecurity, and 46% researchers reported looking for new career opportunities.
Taken together, researchers prioritized tasks that are not demanding in terms of resource requirements, such as reading, manuscript writing, writing for admissions, and manuscript editing ( https://wordvice.com/research-academic-editing-services/).

There are tasks for which there is no convenient work-from-home alternative, and accordingly, lab equipment purchases, teaching, lab management, and physical collaboration with other scientists are the tasks that have seen massive deprioritization by researchers. Not all countries have been equally affected either; Colombian researchers seem to be affected the most by COVID-19, whereas research in Russia and Australia seems to be affected the least.

This survey tells us a lot about how the researchers have been affected. However, the quality of the research itself needs to be analyzed differently.

The dependence on unreliable data

Neel Shah, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynaecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School. While working on his scientific research into COVID-19 and its effects on pregnancy, he reported feeling extremely dependent on shaky data to make what could be life and death decisions. He elaborates his view by mentioning that there is uncomfortable dependence on studies which otherwise would not have been taken seriously in pre-COVID-19 times, even those with evident limitations of an absence of formal reasoning to explain the context or a very small subset of patients. However, the level of dependence on these manuscripts for continuing research and drawing critical conclusions is truly disconcerting.

The journalist exclusion

Fiona Fox, the chief executive at UK’s Science Media Centre, reports worrisome signs of a quality compromise. Typically, important research reaches the people via journalists who are briefed by expert scientists on the contextual significance of the findings. However, because of time constraints and several other factors, the journals are proceeding with the immediate release of papers without the involvement of journalists; because journalists are now excluded from this information flow, the need for the third-party experts who typically explain the significance of the research has become practically non-existent. Fox emphasizes that the need for third-party scientists is higher than ever in these trying times, and their absence from the system increases the risk of irresponsible reporting.

Cite-bait and publication chances

Marcus Munafò, professor of biological psychology at Bristol University’s MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, says that looking at the amount of COVID-19 work in respectable journals, many researchers would be thinking they can get published in those journals. He says, ““There is a similar risk for journals. Their incentive is to put something out there that’s ‘cite-bait’: journals survive by publishing stuff that people read and cite so that more people read the journal. Do journals like The BMJ have an expedited review process, and what checks and balances are in place?” While these are the times of urgency, he reiterates that false information is worse than no information.”

The dilemma: faster publication vs. better manuscripts

A study published in April in JAMA reported 88% mortality among patients put on ventilators. However, this figure did not account for numerous patients who were still alive and ventilated at the time of reporting. Despite this, this study given the topic and the publication house, got a lot of media coverage and reported that 9/10 patients on ventilators do not survive. Although the authors have since issued a correction, which clarified that the ventilator mortality was 24.5% rather than close to 90%, the level of anxiety caused by such news among the common public would have been insurmountable.

The takeaways:

Although there has been a lot of focus shift and reprioritization on the part of researchers to resist the impact of COVID-19 to the extent possible, the industry overall has been negatively impacted, and this impact extends to the quality of research published as well. While the world has come together to fight this pandemic, it is important to know that we are dealing with a new disease.

There are constant developments that seem to complement each other at times and contradict each other at others. With urgency of information being the current need, nothing you see or read seems to be of the usual quality standards. While there can be a debate on whether to wait for certainty of information or publish what we know thus far, the common people are strongly recommended to interpret and implement everything they read with caution as something you read today could be an established truth tomorrow or disproved completely altogether.

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Dhruv Maniar, MSc in Biotechnology, is a writer and editor for Wordvice Editing Service. Wordvice provides high-quality editing and proofreading for journal manuscripts bound for publication and application essays for college and graduate school admissions.

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This release was published on openPR.