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Following media and public attention to a preprint publication discussing the apparent relationship between COVID-19 and ABO blood groups, Joern Bullerdiek from the University of Rostock (Germany) questions whether further rules are necessary to prevent misinformed and unnecessary public anxiety.

My main field of interest is primarily cancer genetics as the work of my colleagues and I is related largely to pathomechanisms and driver mutations in the field of gynaecological tumours, e.g., smooth muscle tumours, tumours of the salivary glands and thyroid tumours. Nevertheless, as a human geneticist I have also some broader interests in the interplay of the human genome with environmental factors. In times of SARS-CoV-2, this brought me to factors of the host genome that could modify the risk of viral infection or of a more serious course of COVID-19, respectively.

Preprint publication in a time of COVID-19

I have had previous experience with preprint publication since before COVID-19, but I felt motivated by the challenges of the pandemic to share my ideas and criticisms by way of an Opinion Article. But this was not the only point.

Worldwide headlines in the lay media on how the ABO-blood groups strongly modified the risks associated with COVID-19 caught my interest. One headline read, “BLOODY HELL – How your blood type could increase your risk of dying from coronavirus – and how to find out yours” (The SUN, June 12, 2020).

I felt that based on the scientific data available these headlines were, to say the least, not justified. On the other hand, they caused an enormous level of public anxiety. What had happened? Results of one or two preprints had been picked up by public media very early while available conflicting data had nearly escaped public attention. I think one main point was the wish to present a ‘sexy’ story, but I see particular responsibility from the authors here, too. Readers who are interested in details may refer to my contribution.

To help avoid such problems in the future, I recommended establishing some additional rules for preprints. Clearly, the authors have a lot of responsibility: before alerting the public by press releases etc., a certain time should be given to the peers to raise criticism and comments which finally can be considered by science journalists along with a preprint´s message. 

Starting long before the time of SARS-CoV-19 but accelerated by it, science has been under attack by new challenges. As examples, consider predatory journals and publishers, papermill productions, a continuously growing number of scientific papers, and so forth. The growing use of preprints as a tool in scientific communications offers new opportunities and risks, and both must be balanced. Moving forward, I hope that the research community will sharpen the rules regarding the translation of preprint data to public media. 

Potential impact of sharper rules for translating preprint data to public media

When considering the potential repercussions of tighter rules, I see two avenues for immediate impact.

First, I do by no means overestimate the significance of the classical pre-publication process. Conclusions are not necessarily true simply because they have passed Peer Review. We all know more or less spectacular examples where this process may have failed. Nevertheless, the audience should know about the relevance of any type of scientific review – be it pre- or post-publication. Ideally, reviewer´s comments should receive the same amount of public interest and attention as a paper itself.

Secondly, revisiting SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 patients and their relatives should not be worried about blood group A predisposing them to a more serious course of the disease or even to influence a higher risk of dying from it. There was no and still is not yet a scientific justification to assume such a correlation. Vice versa, unfortunately no all-clear can be given to people with blood group O. Maybe they have a lower chance of contracting the coronavirus, but they are neither resistant nor can they expect, on average, a milder experience of COVID-19.

Open research

Open research has evolved into an important tool for scientific communication. If and how you use this tool depends on multiple considerations in every single case. In the case of my Opinion Article, I favoured the F1000Research model because I was interested in rapid publication along with a transparent non-anonymous peer review process.

I also took particular delight in the philosophy of F1000Research, allowing the combination of the advantages of ‘classical’ preprints with the transparent review process. My Opinion Article includes criticism and the idea was to stimulate discussion based on such an open peer review.        

Read Bullerdiek’s full article: COVID-19 and blood groups – there is an elephant in the room, but who cares? Do we need additional rules for preprints?