> "When posters included links to e-prints to bolster their arguments, they sometimes misinterpreted what the research said or read just the abstracts without looking at or understanding the researchers’ methodologies."
This is will never change and the it doesn't make sense attribute this as a weakness of pre-publish archives. The only way to combat this is to de-democratize access to research and that is a horrible solution.
I think the next sentence here contains important context:
> They missed flaws in how the research was done or whether it was pseudoscience masquerading as serious scholarship.
If I wanted to get a well-formatted and coherent (i.e. not prima facie false) paper into e.g. arXiv, I really only need to be endorsed by a qualified individual or get automatic endorsement via my affiliation with some institution. Laypeople do not understand just how low the barrier to entry here is, that unproven / poor quality / outright falsified research can easily make its way to preprint archives. Including a link to such research causes your comment to take the form of a well-researched, scientific argument without it necessarily being actual science.
So I don't think the only way to combat this is restricting access to research. One approach that immediately comes to mind would be to show a banner on early preprints, especially those that have zero authors eligible to be endorsers. Or just always show a banner for users that aren't logged in, reminding them that the content hasn't been peer reviewed. Who knows.
This is will never change and the it doesn't make sense attribute this as a weakness of pre-publish archives. The only way to combat this is to de-democratize access to research and that is a horrible solution.