The emergency created by the explosion of the SARS-COVID-19 virus pandemic has induced – and will continue to induce, at least in the near future – a complex set of effects on different scales. The most evident are – and will be – on the social and economic ground, and likely also on the political one. But other issues, less obvious, are altogether relevant. One of them is the production, diffusion, and validation of scientific data. The unprecedented impulse that the research on the new virus has experienced in the last eighteen months – and the incredible results that have allowed the development, testing and distribution of vaccines (even if this is only one of the facets to be taken into account) in times never seen before – is radically changing the procedures governing the way in which biomedical research is performed and communicated; chances are that these changes will not be transient, and affect not only the biology and therapy of viruses. Here I will try to address some of the issues related to this process.