ChatGPT is Writing Scientific Research Papers

AUSTIN, Texas - Sept. 5, 2024 - PRLog -- Are Scientific Journals Becoming Flooded with AI-Generated Research Papers?

Since the introduction of ChatGPT, many in the scientific research community have been trying to evaluate how to incorporate the benefits of AI into their research workflow without tripping over ethically problematic areas.

The experience of Roy Kishony and his team at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa may be typical: As an experiment, Kishony tasked ChatGPT with writing a paper from scratch that evaluated a publicly available CDC data set. Kishony found the resulting paper lacked the kind of unique insights that form a useful paper.

In a survey conducted by Nature, over 1,600 readers weighed in on the pros and cons of using AI in their research work. Many reported positive findings in using AI thanks to it providing helpful, timesaving work – such as generating ideas for hypotheses or optimizing experimental setups. But they also cautioned that AI posed an ethical risk by making it easier to commit fraud or to create irreproducible and/or biased research results.

Sleuthing the Internet to Ferret Out Scientific Papers Written by AI

How many scientific papers are being written by AI?

In late 2022, Ansible Health submitted one of the first papers that intentionally listed ChatGPT as one of the co-authors.

The move generated lots of controversy (perhaps this was their intention?), and suddenly, publications began to quickly amend their submission guidelines to disavow and exclude the very few AI-generated papers they had received to date.

Given the backlash against listing AI as a co-author (more on the policy changes made by journals and government agencies later), we can assume that most recent papers "touched" by AI have been submitted without acknowledging AI's supporting role.

But sometimes, it's still possible to identify the hidden hand of AI.

In one hilarious example, a published paper was "outed" as AI-generated because it mistakenly included the original prompt used to generate the paper's introductory paragraph:

"Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic."

Internet sleuths have stepped into the breach to assist in identifying AI-generated papers.

Two of the prominent internet sleuths who have made it their life's work to identify problematic research papers are David Bimler (who goes by the online name of "Smut Clyde") and Elizabeth Bik, a former researcher who now works full-time uncovering faked image data.

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