this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Science

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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.

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[–] DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But who writes such things? I mean who are the authors?

[–] FundMECFS@quokk.au 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Professors and Researchers and Grad Students who are playing the citation/career game.

[–] hobovision@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not new, just getting worse, huh?

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The motivation isn't, but the technology to generate a slop paper is.

I'll be interested to see how journals and (even better) the scientific community at large deals with this. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise?

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Its gonna be something distopian AF, like every scientist now gets public "science scores" based on number of attributable citations and everyone now tries to game their science score so they can secure tenure.