Redundancy and methodological issues in articles on COVID‐19

Despite the seriousness of the current pandemic, logical and critical thinking, common sense and method remain the mainstay of biomedicine. Unfortunately, the panic caused by the disease has led many to abandon those principles. Some scientists have used the situation to publish substandard articles that would never get published in normal times as journals publish quickly (and gain citations), without proper review and level of criticism. This situation has been used by medical equipment manufacturers and pharmaceutical industry as well, to promote publication of biased sponsored articles.