...right down the rabbit hole.
Higher Ed has been broken for some time, what with the publish-or-perish system creating aberrant and abhorrent behavior, but now, with Large Language Models, there is a deluge of fictional "scientific" publications. Retraction Watch has been diligent in rooting out suspect publications, but now the flood of publications, and suspect publishers and editors has the attention of none other than the Grey Lady. The Times article points to a Moore's Law doubling of suspect publications and notes the increase in publishers of sketchy journals with equally sketchy editors and reviewers on staff.
This is indeed a serious problem. One that has been around for quite some time, but now is headed in the direction of bogus articles far outnumbering legitimate research. Remarking on corrupt paper mills as lucrative business operations does little, and what little is being done, relies on automated processing to detect doctored and fabricated data, and scan for absurd working. Have you ever read an article in popular press that uses the words "furthermore," "what's more," or "moreover," then you are reading something spewed out by a LLM. Nobody really uses those words. In an effort to hide their plagiarism, these millworkers pump out drivel that includes similarly uncomfortable diction, as well as artificial hallucinations and citations that do not exist.
The Grey Lady finishes up as she so often does of late: with a swipe at Trump. A postdoc is quoted saying that the "stuff that the Trump administration is doing" is going to make the situation worse. Yes. That's right. "Stuff" is the appropriate technical term. It is worth noting that neither the NYT author, nor any of the sources provided any kind of solution. None whatsoever.
Posts
