FundMECFS

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/post/119938

The appearance of thousands of formulaic biomedical studies has been linked to the rise of text-generating AI tools.

Data from five large open-access health databases are being used to generate thousands of poor-quality, formulaic papers, an analysis has found. Its authors say that the surge in publications could indicate the exploitation of these databases by people using large language models(LLMs) to mass-produce scholarly articles, or even by paper mills — companies that churn out papers to order.

The appearance of thousands of formulaic biomedical studies has been linked to the rise of text-generating AI tools.

Data from five large open-access health databases are being used to generate thousands of poor-quality, formulaic papers, an analysis has found. Its authors say that the surge in publications could indicate the exploitation of these databases by people using large language models(LLMs) to mass-produce scholarly articles, or even by paper mills — companies that churn out papers to order.

Researchers have been sneaking secret messages into their papers in an effort to trick artificial intelligence (AI) tools into giving them a positive peer-review report.

The Tokyo-based news magazine Nikkei Asiareported last week on the practice, which had previously been discussed on social media. Nature has independently found 18 preprint studies containing such hidden messages, which are usually included as white text and sometimes in an extremely small font that would be invisible to a human but could be picked up as an instruction to an AI reviewer.