Egregious examples of #artificial #intelligence that have recently made their way into #scientific #journals, shine a light on the wave of AI-generated text and images washing over the academic publishing industry.

Several experts who track down problems in studies told AFP that the rise of AI has turbocharged the existing problems in the multi-billion-dollar sector.

All the experts emphasized that AI programs such as ChatGPT can be a helpful tool for writing or translating papers—if thoroughly checked and disclosed.

But that was not the case for recent cases that somehow snuck past peer review, such as:
An infographic of a rat with a preposterously large penis.
Another showing human legs with way too many bones.
An introduction that starts: "Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic".

It is not always so easy to spot the use of AI.
-- But one clue is that ChatGPT tends to favor certain words.

Andrew Gray, a librarian at University College London, trawled through millions of papers searching for the overuse of words such as #meticulous, #intricate or #commendable.

He determined that at least
60,000 papers involved the use of AI in 2023
—over one percent of the annual total.

"For 2024 we are going to see very significantly increased numbers," Gray told AFP.

Meanwhile, more than
️13,000 papers were #retracted last year, by far the most in history, according to the US-based group Retraction Watch.

AI has allowed the bad actors in scientific publishing and academia to "industrialize the overflow" of "#junk" papers, Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky told AFP.

Such bad actors include what are known as #paper #mills.

These "scammers"
sell authorship to researchers, pumping out vast amounts of very poor quality, plagiarized or fake papers, said Elisabeth Bik, a Dutch researcher who detects scientific image manipulation.

Two percent of all studies are thought to be published by paper mills,
but the rate is "exploding" as AI opens the floodgates, Bik told AFP.

This problem was highlighted when academic publishing giant Wiley purchased troubled publisher Hindawi in 2021.

Since then, the US firm has retracted more than 11,300 papers related to special issues of Hindawi, a Wiley spokesperson told AFP.

Wiley has now introduced a "paper mill detection service" to detect AI misuse—which itself is powered by AI.

https://phys.org/news/2024-08-junk-ai-scientific-publishing.html