Abstract
Prepublication Communication of Research Results
Highlights
Our collective experience suggests that communication of unpublished results is generally limited to conversations among close colleagues or presentations at scientific conferences where there is a mutual understanding, often emphasized during presentations, that unpublished findings are provisional
A precarious situation arises when a finding has critical time-sensitive implications like the discovery of an emerging pathogen in a novel region. This came to our attention because of a situation involving the potential discovery of the amphibian fungal pathogen commonly called Bsal that is currently causing salamander die-offs in Europe (Stegen et al 2017)
Bsal is not known to occur in North America (AmphibiaWeb 2018), but laboratory studies suggest that North American amphibians are susceptible (Martel et al 2013; Stegen et al 2017) and the risk to native amphibians is high (Yap et al 2015; Richgels et al 2016)
Summary
Our collective experience suggests that communication of unpublished results is generally limited to conversations among close colleagues or presentations at scientific conferences where there is a mutual understanding, often emphasized during presentations, that unpublished findings are provisional. Scientists can be more reluctant to communicate directly with public officials who might make decisions based on provisional findings. A precarious situation arises when a finding has critical time-sensitive implications like the discovery of an emerging pathogen in a novel region.
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