Fears researchers ‘who don’t really know anything about it’ being pressured to chase coronavirus funding
Pressure on academics to switch research focus and go after Covid-19 funding during the pandemic has created a flood of projects and papers, including those of questionable quality, a number of scientists have said.
Since the crisis began, there have been numerous funding calls to tackle the virus. At the same time, researchers unable to continue their normal activity have been advised by their institutions to “adapt” their research to the pandemic.
Much of the resulting research is relevant and important—but there are concerns over the quality of some projects, according to Petra Boynton, a social psychologist, research consultant and author of The Research Companion: A practical guide for the social and health sciences.
“In some ways, it’s been quite a positive reaction,” Boynton told Research Professional News. “But I’ve been hearing of more concerning behaviours where people are thinking of ways they can pin their research onto Covid-19 to get money.”
In some ways, she says, it’s not surprising that there’s been a boom in virus-related research—“because we know academics chase the money all the time”.
“But there are academics whose research has little or nothing to do with Covid-19 who don’t really know anything about it and are suddenly being pressured to go after the funding.”
Given that a few months ago the world was hit by a “new, potentially fatal disease with literally zero research evidence to guide practice and policy, it’s understandable that thousands of researchers shifted their attention to trying to strengthen the evidence base”, says Trish Greenhalgh, professor of primary care health sciences at the University of Oxford.
“Clinicians trying to treat patients, and policymakers trying to implement effective prevention and infection control strategies, were grasping at straws,” she says, adding that a “lot of data were collected and a lot of papers written in understandable haste”.
“The preprint servers are in overdrive,” she says, referring to what she sees as a large number of studies of questionable quality posted on preprint servers without peer review.
“But we’re now beginning to realise that thousands of non-peer-reviewed papers may be little better—and in some cases may even be worse—than no evidence at all,” Greenhalgh says. “Peer review has come in for a lot of flak in recent years, but I think we’ll all be glad when it’s restored to its place in the scientific process.”
Her views were recently echoed by Germany’s leading coronavirus expert Christian Drosten, who told The Guardian that not all the science being done around the coronavirus was good science.
“Early on, in February, there were many interesting preprints around,” he said. “Now you can read through 50 before you find something that’s actually solid and interesting. A lot of research resources are being wasted.”
As well as concerns over the quality of research, there are fears that other important areas of research are being neglected.
Boynton says the pattern is reminiscent of what happened with the HIV epidemic when it first started. “First of all, they ignored it—then suddenly everyone went after the funding,” she says, adding that this led to “very poor research results” and to a neglect of other important issues—such as heart disease in sub-Saharan Africa.
She adds that the issue of pinning research onto Covid-19 to get money regardless of expertise is happening “more in psychology and social sciences and on the periphery of medicine”.
That is not to say that the social sciences cannot play an important part in analysing the pandemic—such as by examining the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.
“This [issue] seems to me to be hugely important, but I think it needs to be led by health and social science scholars who are black and minority ethnic themselves and who have worked in this area before,” she says.
Additional reporting by Mico Tatalovic.
A version of this article also appeared in Research Fortnight