Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature

[Greg Bernhardt]

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?​

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00969-z

Anyone have thoughts on their own experience and what the options are to combat this?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Unfortunately, the whole scientific enterprise relies on each individual researcher behaving ethically and professionally, even when there are substantial incentives to 'cut corners'.

IMO, the only way to combat this problem is to hold the authors accountable.- The way that article phrases it, the Journal takes responsibility rather than the authors. Simply withdrawing a manuscript means it will appear elsewhere, in a different journal. The Journal editors could send a report to the author's institutional research integrity officer/conduct board, for example.

 

[Rive]

Honestly, I would consider this fraud.

 

[BillTre]

How about using AI to search out bad references?

 

[Muu9]

Shouldn't peer review be catching these fraudulent citations? If it isn't, what does that suggest about the feasibility of the current peer-review based scientific model?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Shouldn't peer review be catching these fraudulent citations? If it isn't, what does that suggest about the feasibility of the current peer-review based scientific model?

Again, the merit of peer review relies upon humans acting professionally. Bad actors always exist, but that's why some journals are considered 'higher quality' than others.

Peer review is like democracy- to poorly quote Churchill, "peer-review is the worst form of scientific certification except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."