The article is “published” on a preprint server and carries a suitable warning at the top. It’s preliminary, unverified and not reviewed. The target audience is

The article is “published” on a preprint server and carries a suitable warning at the top. It’s preliminary, unverified and not reviewed. The target audience is other researchers, not the general public. It’s useful to publish preliminary results based on low sample sizes, it can guide future research. Basically a “hey, we found something we consider interesting, it may be worth having a better look at this.” It’s very dangerous to read too much into this, though - hence the warning at the top.