Preprint means that it has not been peer reviewed. It is likely in submission to various journals, where a few people in the field (hopefully peers in the field

Preprint means that it has not been peer reviewed. It is likely in submission to various journals, where a few people in the field (hopefully peers in the field!) will discuss the edge cases of the study. In my experience this ranges from a rival lab you get along with giving you shit for not checking something out, to a lab that has no idea what genes are in a zebrafish accusing you that the gene you are studying does not exist in zebrafish. Note: this happened to me, and there is google maps for zebrafish genes, this is easy: https://zfin.org/search?category=&q=SHC https://zfin.org/search?category=&q=SHC You never know what kind of questions they might ask! Papers do in fact get rejected for shoddy work, or get sent to revision. Often it's not a huge problem, maybe fix a figure, double check some other work, or refer you to someone else's study that contradicts your claim. If you're not a fraud, you generally bring your strongest case, so the only tuning needed is details. That being said, peer review doesn't always work, as there are cases of publishing fraud. However, for labs that get exceptional scoops you can bet people are going to try to replicate it and if it turns out it doesn't work you've got some explaining to do. (Your academic reputation is now on the line.) Here's a short list of notes on retractions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retractions_in_academic_publishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retractions_in_academic_publis... In my career (10y), I personally witnessed two people immolate their careers over publishing papers that didn't work or stole results from someone else. Fun retraction watch site here: https://retractionwatch.com https://retractionwatch.com To directly answer your questions: Mice (and to a greater extent, animal models) are the current standard for advancing studies in biology. Are there problems with mouse models? Sure. Is there currently a better alternative? No. Are preprints bad? No. It used to be there was no such thing as a preprint, you submitted your work to a journal and that was that. Accept or reject. You might have sent the preprint version to people in your field you were collaborating with, or some deconstructed version to verify parts of your work. Now with arxiv style publishing, it's up to the community at large to figure out what's what. I'm not saying one or the other is better. Us biodorks are catching up to physics people. However, anyone can publish to arxiv, including kooks. Can preprints be bad? Yes. This work has no scrutiny to its claims by anyone outside of the authors, so for laypeople not in the field we don't have a good insight as to make heads or tails of these claims. Could you look it all up? Of course! Contrast that to someone in the field that might say on sight: "Yeah, Nichols' work has been pretty out there" or "That gene doesn't work the same way in zebrafish." :D Mice are uncontroversial. Preprints are uncontroversial. I don't think I'd put money on either. I would be more interested to see follow up work than change the animal model. PS: Wow, I had good coffee this morning!