Journalistic interpretation of these tiny, rushed studies has also been god awful since the beginning. This is true during the best of times, but every clickbait headlines spreading disinformation during an actual pandemic should not be tolerated, especially amongst the more reputable news sources (looking at you NYT).
This right here. If people look at the actual study, they'll see the number of caveats and various exact conditions where the study proved something, whereas the media tends to pretend that those caveats or conditions don't exist therefore, the study works everywhere. That's why people don't trust science, "oh, its probably wrong again".
Some of the worst offenders have been scientists, who promote their own studies (eg, the French hydroxychloroquine studies).
It's possible to pick holes in these studies if you know the field. But these holes aren't pointed out in the papers themselves, and peer review doesn't stop this.
Peer reviewers are experts in the field. So they know if they are looking at a 30 person study it isn't conclusive, and wouldn't expect the author to state that. It's just assumed the readers know that.
We see the real impact of this with things like the Vitamin D studies. Experts know that Vitamin D deficiency is highly correlated with age and other health issues, but that the causation chain is "Person is unhealthy so doesn't get outside as much so gets less Vitamin D, and in some cases are deficient which can make health issues worse". Non-experts read the report and see the causation going the other way, ie, they think: "High Vitamin D fixes health issues".
