Taxacom: An AI generated scientific paper and a predatory journal

Sat Jul 6 12:59:55 CDT 2024

Let me share a nice horrible article on the uncertain future of scientific research:
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientificamerican.com%2Farticle%2Fchatbots-have-thoroughly-infiltrated-scientific-publishing%2F&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C87bb7ccad0bc443e51af08dc9de57395%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638558856020087907%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GV3Km7%2FKXjwvN7Tk%2BcCscZZqHnZiDm9Jaz2aNQd8Dik%3D&reserved=0

AI is not all bad. My wife found the phrase erga pro logou in a work written in the 1800's, reporting it as carved by a student on a tree. We could not find it on the Web, on Wikipedia, or Google Scholar. As a last resort I asked the poe.com AI about it and got the correct answer immediately "Work before talk." No citation of source, but doubtless correct. Apparently, even when correct, AIs do not stand on the shoulders of humans. 

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Richard H. Zander - Missouri Botanical Garden - 4344 Shaw Blvd - St. Louis, MO 63110 U.S.A. - 314-577-0276
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-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Donald Hobern via Taxacom
Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2024 6:46 PM
To: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Subject: Re: Taxacom: An AI generated scientific paper and a predatory journal

Neither of you has commented on the fact that, within its single page length, the PDF includes the same paragraph twice.

Having tried to help clean up a few documents that people "improved" with AI, the mind-numbingly droning character of the text is the most obvious clue this is AI-generated.

For any of you familiar with UK radio comedy shows, the tone is often exactly like that of sentences in the show "Just A Minute" where speakers have to talk on some topic without repeating any words. The focus is on playing the word game and remaining on-topic rather than actually saying anything novel or thought-provoking or even authoritative.

Donald

-- 

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On Thu, 4 Jul 2024 at 13:31, Peter Uetz <uetz at vcu.edu> wrote:

> Richard, the Banerjee / Crimson paper that you say was AI-generated 
> already has a number of red flags right at first sight:
>
> 1. A dubious publisher
> 2. A ?review" that has literally only 1 page ? seriously?
> 3. No obvious data, figures, tables ? how can this be a credible 
> scientific paper?
> 4. No email address of the author ? always a red flag, and common in 
> many predatory journals.
> 5. DOI link doesn?t work
>
> Well, at least the references I checked were legit and not hallucinated.
>
> I did find and email the author ? no response yet.
>
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