ISTOCK, OSTAPENKOOLENATwo weeks ago, a tweet storm erupted over what scientists normally consider a noble effort: the posting of a preprint to bioRxiv. The article originally went online in March, but in July, a reader noticed something missing in the draft—the methods. “As such it is not possible to critically evaluate the manuscript,” the anonymous commenter Preprint Now noted on bioRxiv.
Shortly after, the tweets arrived. “Preprints without methods are ads not scientific manuscripts and should be treated as such,” Michael Eisen, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, tweeted.
“The potential use of preprints to establish priority without full disclosure of methods or else is worrying and counterproductive,” tweeted Timothée Lionnet, a biophysicist at New York University.
The paper in question, which described a new RNA-sequencing technique, was published by a group of researchers at MIT’s Broad Institute. One of the study’s coauthors, Aviv Regev, a computational biologist, quickly responded to Preprint Now’s comment, indicating that this was an accidental omission and posting an updated version of the manuscript. “We appreciate your comment and completely agree with it. Methods sections should be included,” Regev ...
