THERE ARE TIDBITS A’PLENTY in scientific matters, as reported in Science, publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow are three contrasting aspects.
A.I.-Generated Commentaries Flood Journals, Distort Metrics. Scientific journals typically have peer review to assess the significance of technical papers prior to their being published. And after publication, commentaries— essentially “letters to the editor”—add to the subject matter. Together, the totality of citations becomes something of a rating system on a paper’s relevance. Loosely, Prof. Nobody becomes Prof. Somebody, at least in part based on the number of citations.
Unless these commentaries, which generally have no peer review, are churned out by Artificial Intelligence. Frederik Joelving, Retraction Watch, describes this lamentable practice in “Shoddy Commentaries—a Quick and Dirty Route to High Impact Numbers—Are On The Rise,” Science, December 17, 2024.
Joelving observes that A.I.-generated commentaries “now make up 70% of the content in Elsevier’s Oral Oncology Reports, and nearly half in Wolters Kluwer’s International Journal of Surgery Open. At Neurosurgical Review, a Springer Nature title [which recently put a hold on the practice], letters, comments, and editorials comprised 58% of the total output from January to October—up from 9% last year. More than 80% of these commentaries are from South Asian countries, compared with fewer than 20% of research and review articles.”
Image by Master1305/Shutterstock via Science.
Essentially, lazy researchers are finding it easier to activate A.I. than to do actual research; this, despite the recognized tendency for such Large Language Model A.I. to generate occasional hallucinations.
Joelving cited how “…in the preceding 2 months, three authors from one university in India had published ‘an astonishing 69 comments’ in the journal. Nearly all of them appeared to be machine written and lacked substantive relevance,’….. The publications also cited ‘irrelevant’ works from other researchers at the same institution as the authors—Saveetha University.”
Furthermore, Joelving notes, “Saveetha, which hosts India’s top dental school, has a history of manipulating metrics to improve its rankings. A 2023 investigation by Science and Retraction Watch found the institution coerced students write thousands of research papers during exams that were then furnished with inappropriate citations to other Saveetha works. Retraction Watch later reported that the school offered payments to prolific authors around the world for listing it as an affiiiation on their publications.”
Geez.
I’d swap the diligent work of Retraction Watch for DOGE in an instant.
Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll lighten up a bit with elephants and with weatherman Trump wielding a Sharpie. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025