These 2% of fabricated citations are not just a few errors; they are the signature of an AI (and a rather good one at that). The entire report is fabricated by an AI.
Great point about how "because these goals are so important that we should all demand genuine scientific rigor, not superficial pretenses of evidence." The whole fiasco is so troubling.
People who are reacting to this the wrong way seem to act like AI-fabricated "research" citations are just an "Oopsies!" that can easily happen to people, just like other errors like inputting a data point wrong or misspelling someone's name. But like, how would a fake AI-generated study make it into a research paper anyway? Only by someone using AI to pull data for them and to interpret it for them. Even for a college student writing a research paper for a class assignment be turned in (and not to be published), that sounds extremely sloppy at best.
I've seen some spin on this topic, where people are saying the number (or percentage) of citation errors in the report is less than the median number of citation errors in research in general. That's not a topic I'm well-versed on, and obviously we should want all scientists to work diligently on their citations so that papers are error free, or corrected quickly and transparently. But regardless, this argument still misses the point. This paper was made for POLICY purposes for all the children of America! How in the world people can argue, "It's fine because it had less errors than other papers!" blows my mind. IT STILL HAS ERRORS. BIG ONES. That's not ok regardless of how it compares to OTHER papers.
Good points! The type of errors is important. And having some errors is one thing, but having made up studies is another beast! How would those even get there?? Even a research paper that wasn't diligently read through wouldn't have AI-fabricated studies because the researchers wouldn't have even had them to begin with to cite. It doesn't seem like something that can easily slip in and not be noticed. They had to be put in there
“The presence of fake references isn’t a minor detail, even if they do make up a minority of total citations. It’s proof of a broken, unserious approach - confirmation bias masquerading as science.”
There’s this concept known as “honor.” If you have perpetrated such an egregious offense as this (among the thousands of dishonorable, illegitimate actions and statements from Rfk jr and his band), you have forfeited any claim to engagement with serious policy. You have dishonored yourself, and you should be banished, if you do banished yourself. If not, the entire process is a joke.
These 2% of fabricated citations are not just a few errors; they are the signature of an AI (and a rather good one at that). The entire report is fabricated by an AI.
Great point about how "because these goals are so important that we should all demand genuine scientific rigor, not superficial pretenses of evidence." The whole fiasco is so troubling.
People who are reacting to this the wrong way seem to act like AI-fabricated "research" citations are just an "Oopsies!" that can easily happen to people, just like other errors like inputting a data point wrong or misspelling someone's name. But like, how would a fake AI-generated study make it into a research paper anyway? Only by someone using AI to pull data for them and to interpret it for them. Even for a college student writing a research paper for a class assignment be turned in (and not to be published), that sounds extremely sloppy at best.
I've seen some spin on this topic, where people are saying the number (or percentage) of citation errors in the report is less than the median number of citation errors in research in general. That's not a topic I'm well-versed on, and obviously we should want all scientists to work diligently on their citations so that papers are error free, or corrected quickly and transparently. But regardless, this argument still misses the point. This paper was made for POLICY purposes for all the children of America! How in the world people can argue, "It's fine because it had less errors than other papers!" blows my mind. IT STILL HAS ERRORS. BIG ONES. That's not ok regardless of how it compares to OTHER papers.
Good points! The type of errors is important. And having some errors is one thing, but having made up studies is another beast! How would those even get there?? Even a research paper that wasn't diligently read through wouldn't have AI-fabricated studies because the researchers wouldn't have even had them to begin with to cite. It doesn't seem like something that can easily slip in and not be noticed. They had to be put in there
“The presence of fake references isn’t a minor detail, even if they do make up a minority of total citations. It’s proof of a broken, unserious approach - confirmation bias masquerading as science.”
Exactly what I have been thinking.
Thank you for all of your work to communicate the deeper issues with RFK's "leadership".
There’s this concept known as “honor.” If you have perpetrated such an egregious offense as this (among the thousands of dishonorable, illegitimate actions and statements from Rfk jr and his band), you have forfeited any claim to engagement with serious policy. You have dishonored yourself, and you should be banished, if you do banished yourself. If not, the entire process is a joke.