I think this problem is interesting and it carries over to the general public. Is the general public and are the media outlets also equally skeptical? Are they aware of the distinction between published journals vs preprints?

Take this as an example:

Search for this in google: "ai data centers heat island". Around 80 websites published articles based on a preprint which was largely shown to be completely wrong and misleading.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/30/climate/data-centers-are-...

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/01/ai_datacenter_heat_is...

https://hackaday.com/2026/04/07/the-heat-island-effect-is-wa...

https://dev.ua/en/news/shi-infrastruktura-pochala-hrity-mist...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2521256-ai-data-centres...

https://fortune.com/2026/04/01/ai-data-centers-heat-island-h...

You may not believe it but the impact this had on general population was huge. Lots of people took it as true and there seem to be no consequences.

What should be a takeaway for the LLM should also be a takeaway for the media outlets.