Why its important to look for the limitations in coronavirus studies

This week, I got to talk about vaccines and vaccine information with Natalie Dean, and The Verge’s Nicole Wetsman and Nilay Patel on The Vergecast. It was a great conversation with Dean, who is an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida and an expert in infectious disease epidemiology who has worked on designing vaccine trials.

After the podcast, I got to ask something that had been on my mind: how did she — a person who works with scientific data every day — feel about the flood of early versions of scientific studies being posted online? And how much attention should the general public be paying to them?

Before we get to her answer, let’s take a quick step back to talk about what these early studies are....

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