Preprint servers and what screening they do

Always label it as a preprint in any discussion. A preprint is not a published trial and it is not settled knowledge. Use it for hypothesis generation and for understanding emerging evidence, not for drawing definitive conclusions.

The claim is narrower than it sounds, and deliberately so.

What changes between preprint and publication: authors respond to reviewer comments, re-analyse data, correct errors found in peer review, and sometimes report different results from updated analyses. The published version is not the same as the preprint.

I looked this up rather than remembered it, which is the right order.

Screening on a preprint server is minimal and is not review. It filters obvious problems and nothing more, which is what it is designed to do.

That reframing is the whole thing. The facts I already had.

This is the first time the answer has come with its own limits attached. Appreciated.

Screening on a preprint server is minimal and is not review. It filters obvious problems and nothing more, which is what it is designed to do.

It is the kind of thing that is obvious once and never again.

This follows post #78 rather than contradicting it.

Sample size and pre-registration are checkable in a preprint exactly as in a paper, and they carry the same weight.

Author track record is a weak signal and it is a signal. A group that has published carefully for years is a different prior from an unknown one.

Not a strong opinion, just a consistent one.

Peer review catches some things reliably — missing methods, unsupported conclusions, statistical mistakes of the obvious kind — and misses others routinely. Knowing which is which makes preprint reading easier.

Not the whole picture, but the part of it I can speak to.