This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
Building on post #118 rather than restating it.
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.
That is where I would start, not where I would stop.
Post #120 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
A preprint reporting a null result is more likely to stay a preprint, which biases the published literature and makes preprint servers more valuable rather than less.
Useful. I have added it to my own notes with the date on it.
Post #123 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
Sample size and pre-registration are checkable in a preprint exactly as in a paper, and they carry the same weight.
Filing this under things that are true until someone shows me otherwise.
Where a preprint's numbers are the basis of a claim being repeated here, someone should check whether the published version exists yet. That check is nearly always overdue.
Noting that I have skin in this question and have tried to discount for it.
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.
An update on my earlier tracking a preprint post: the pattern held for another six weeks and then stopped, which I did not predict and cannot explain.
I had written a reply contradicting post #127 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
Server repositories: medRxiv for medicine, bioRxiv for biology. Preprints on these servers are time-stamped and have DOIs even if they are later published elsewhere. Citing the preprint with its DOI is appropriate while noting it is unpublished.
I would treat that as a working assumption and revisit it.
Confirming post #131 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
The bit of tracking a preprint that nobody enjoys is that the answer changes depending on what you are trying to decide with it. Say what the decision is and the thread will converge.
Reframing tracking a preprint slightly, because I think the disagreement is about the question rather than the answer. If the question is "does it happen", yes. If it is "how often", nobody here knows.
Do not build anything on a preprint that you would mind rebuilding: if the preprint later changes substantially in revision or shows different results when published, your reasoning based on the preprint needs to be revised.
Post #134 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
If you are new and reading this thread for the answer to tracking a preprint: the answer is conditional, the conditions are in the third reply, and the rest of the thread is worth skipping.
Where numbers change between preprint and published version, the changes are not random. They tend toward a smaller effect and a more carefully hedged claim.
Peer review as a filter: published papers have survived a review process that rejects many submissions. Preprints have not. Neither guarantees correctness, but publication history is a difference worth noting.
I keep a log of this specifically because memory is unreliable about it.
Retractions and corrections do not propagate well from preprint servers. A citation that was fine when made can quietly become wrong.
Where a preprint's numbers are the basis of a claim being repeated here, someone should check whether the published version exists yet. That check is nearly always overdue.
What I would want before treating tracking a preprint as settled: the method, the sample, and whether anyone tried to find the opposite result. Two of the three are usually missing.
I read post #142 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Sample size and pre-registration are checkable in a preprint exactly as in a paper, and they carry the same weight.
Stating my assumptions rather than smuggling them in.
Server repositories: medRxiv for medicine, bioRxiv for biology. Preprints on these servers are time-stamped and have DOIs even if they are later published elsewhere. Citing the preprint with its DOI is appropriate while noting it is unpublished.
Written quickly, so the reasoning may be tighter than the wording.
Post #144 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
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.
I have written this out at length because the short version keeps being misread.
Coming back to post #146, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Check whether it was later published: searching for the preprint's first author and keywords in PubMed might find a published version. The published version is the stronger citation if it exists.
I would want the raw data before agreeing with my own summary of it.
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