As health authorities isolate the sick, set up quarantines and close borders, early efforts to stop a coronavirus pandemic are also trying something completely different: “open science.”

The COVID-19 outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, has become an important test case for the risks and benefits of open science—a movement long-simmering within the global research community. By calling for rapid, free and public posting of scientific findings, it amounts to a rebellion against the old ways of conducting and reporting research.

Scientists throughout the world are publicly sharing brief clinical reports and gene sequences of the novel coronavirus, bypassing the careful curation and peer review that still dominates the distribution of most scientific information.

The benefits? Lightning-fast collaborations that might help forestall a pandemic. The risks? Bad science can share that spotlight and, when something as scary as this coronavirus comes along, contribute to the cacophony of conspiracy theorists on the internet.