On Sep. 9, 2024, Santo Fortunato, a professor at Luddy School of Informatics, reported that an international research team, detailed in a research paper, “What we should learn from pandemic publishing,” found that less than eight percent of authors of papers on COVID-19 were infectious disease experts. More than 60 percent of COVID-19 papers were coauthored by scientists without expertise on infectious diseases.

The urgency of finding fast solutions to Covid-19 — which affected policy decision making as well as pandemic science research — led to the participation of many scientists. Some were experts in the field, some were from other disciplines, and many had little to no infectious disease experience.

The result was an unprecedented amount of media coverage and public debate. There were a large number of Covid-19 articles, many with inaccurate or misleading information. The study results were published in the Nature Human Behavior.