Correcting “TIME100 Health”

Recently, Richard Sever was recognized in TIME100 Health 2025, providing evidence that the media isn’t always above falling for a press release — hook, line, and sinker.

I’m presenting the text below in order to correct what Charlotte Hu of TIME put her name over so that it aligns more closely with reality.

For each paragraph, I’ve bolded problematic words, then explained the problems in bullet points before proceeding to the next.

When Richard Sever co-founded a medical research preprint site — where scientists can share early versions of their research with the public for free — called medRxiv in 2019, he couldn’t have foreseen what was coming. By March 2020, the site was getting hundreds of new research paper submissions every week — first from China, then Italy, then the UK and US, mirroring the spread of COVID-19 cases around the world. Sever and his team were working 14-hour days, 7 days a week to screen each paper to verify the science, catch plagiarism, protect patient privacy, and eliminate misinformation.