En la prisa por difundir sus hallazgos sobre COVID-19, los científicos publican cada vez más manuscritos preliminares de sus estudios en la web antes de que sus colegas verifiquen la calidad de sus documentos. Estos son los pasos que los periodistas pueden tomar para decidir si cubrirlos o no, y cómo cubrir estas investigaciones no revisadas.
In the rush to disseminate their findings about COVID-19, scientists are increasingly posting preliminary manuscripts of their studies online before these papers are vetted for quality by their peers. Here are the steps journalists can take to decide whether and how to cover this unvetted research.
For as long as it’s been possible to record interviews with sources, journalists have had to grapple with the decision about whether to transcribe this material, and if so how much. Reporters with abundant financial or institutional resources could hire another human being to type out the interviews, using one of many independent companies that offer human-based transcription services. But the rest had to do it themselves. Now a bevy of transcription services have emerged online that process audio automatically.
Charles Piller’s 2015 STAT investigation “Failure to Report,” and the accompanying interactive graphic by Natalia Bronshtein, offered shocking details about institutions’ widespread failure to deposit clinical trial results into the public database ClinicalTrials.gov—and how that failure puts human lives at risk. Looking closely at Piller’s article, one sees the careful way he unpacks the unexpected revelations for readers. In the Q&A that follows, Piller shares how he methodically structured the piece and what it takes to dive headfirst into this sort of investigation.
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