"An editor from a well-known journal in his field had asked him to review a paper that they were considering for publication. It seemed like a straightforward piece of science. Nothing set off any alarm bells, until Quintana looked at the references and saw his own name. The citation of his work looked correct-it contained a plausible title and included authors whom he'd worked with in the past-but the paper it referred to did not exist."
"Every day, on Bluesky and LinkedIn, Quintana had seen academics posting about finding these "phantom citations" in scientific papers. (The initial version of the Trump administration's "MAHA Report" on children's health, released last spring, contained more than half a dozen of them.) But until Quintana found a fake "Quintana" paper cited in a journal he was refereeing, he'd figured that the problem was limited to publications with lower standards. "When it happens at a journal that you respect, you realize how widespread this problem is," he told me."
An academic referee discovered a fabricated citation to a nonexistent paper that used his name and plausible coauthors. Phantom citations are being reported frequently on social platforms and have appeared in official reports, illustrating broad occurrence. The discovery of fake references in respected journals indicates the problem extends beyond low-standard publications. Scientific journals long faced high submission volumes, which motivated the development of peer review to manage quality. The emergence of AI-generated low-quality or fabricated content is exacerbating editorial burdens and risking erosion of confidence in published scientific findings.
Read at The Atlantic
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