this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
427 points (99.5% liked)

Science Memes

11130 readers
3063 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
427
Name & shame. :) (mander.xyz)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] PiratePanPan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 73 points 6 months ago

Elsevier is such a fucking joke. Science should be free and open, anyways.

[–] yamapikariya@lemmyfi.com 68 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Dude. Couldn't even proofread the easy way out they took

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 43 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This almost makes me think they're trying to fully automate their publishing process. So, no editor in that case.

Editors are expensive.

[–] yamapikariya@lemmyfi.com 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If they really want to do it, they can just run a local language model trained to proofread stuff like this. Would be way better

[–] FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 10 points 6 months ago (10 children)

This is exactly the line of thinking that lead to papers like this being generated.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] TheFarm@lemmy.world 27 points 6 months ago (2 children)

This is what baffles me about these papers. Assuming the authors are actually real people, these AI-generated mistakes in publications should be pretty easy to catch and edit.

It does make you wonder how many people are successfully putting AI-generated garbage out there if they're careful enough to remove obviously AI-generated sentences.

[–] BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I definitely utilize AI to assist me in writing papers/essays, but never to just write the whole thing.

Mainly use it for structuring or rewording sections to flow better or sound more professional, and always go back to proofread and ensure that any information stays correct.

Basically, I provide any data/research and get a rough layout down, and then use AI to speed up the refining process.

EDIT: I should note that I am not writing scientific papers using this method, and doing so is probably a bad idea.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 67 points 6 months ago (2 children)

To me, this is a major ethical issue. If any actual humans submitted this “paper”, they should be severely disciplined by their ethics board.

[–] bitfucker@programming.dev 74 points 6 months ago (2 children)

But the publisher who published it should be liable too. Wtf is their job then? Parasiting off of public funded research?

[–] plantedworld@lemmy.world 36 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Bitfucker knew that was rhetorical.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] repungnant_canary@lemmy.world 63 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Maybe, if reviewers were paid for their job they could actually focus on reading the paper and those things wouldn't slide. But then Elsevier shareholders could only buy one yacht a year instead of two and that would be a nightmare...

[–] adenoid@lemmy.world 37 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Elsevier pays its reviewers very well! In fact, in exchange for my last review, I received a free month of ScienceDirect and Scopus...

... Which my institution already pays for. Honestly it's almost more insulting than getting nothing.

I try to provide thorough reviews for about twice as many articles as I publish in an effort to sort of repay the scientific community for taking the time to review my own articles, but in academia reviewing is rewarded far less than publishing. Paid reviews sound good but I'd be concerned that some would abuse this system for easy cash and review quality would decrease (not that it helped in this case). If full open access publishing is not available across the board (it should be), I would love it if I could earn open access credits for my publications in exchange for providing reviews.

[–] Ragdoll_X@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I've always wondered if some sort of decentralized, community-led system would be better than the current peer review process.

That is, someone can submit their paper and it's publicly available for all to read, then people with expertise in fields relevant to that paper could review and rate its quality.

Now that I think about it it's conceptually similar to Twitter's community notes, where anyone with enough reputation can write a note and if others rate it as helpful it's shown to everyone. Though unlike Twitter there would obviously need to be some kind of vetting process so that it's not just random people submitting and rating papers.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] match@pawb.social 6 points 6 months ago

Fuck that, they should pay special bounty hunters to expose LLM garbage, I'd take that job instantly

[–] shadowtofu@discuss.tchncs.de 60 points 6 months ago (3 children)

This article has been removed at the request of the Editors-in-Chief and the authors because informed patient consent was not obtained by the authors in accordance with journal policy prior to publication. The authors sincerely apologize for this oversight.

In addition, the authors have used a generative AI source in the writing process of the paper without disclosure, which, although not being the reason for the article removal, is a breach of journal policy. The journal regrets that this issue was not detected during the manuscript screening and evaluation process and apologies are offered to readers of the journal.

The journal regrets – Sure, the journal. Nobody assuming responsibility …

[–] Taako_Tuesday@lemmy.ca 29 points 6 months ago (3 children)

What, nobody read it before it was published? Whenever I've tried to publish anything it gets picked over with a fine toothed comb. But somehow they missed an entire paragraph of the AI equivalent of that joke from parks and rec: "I googled your symptoms and it looks like you have 'network connectivity issues'"

[–] bitfucker@programming.dev 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I am still baffled by the rat dick illustration that got past the review

[–] maculata@aussie.zone 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

RAT DICK,

RAT DICK,

WHATCHA GONNA DO,

WHATCHAGONNADO WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 6 points 6 months ago

Nobody would read it even after it was published. No scientist have time to read other’s papers. They’re too busy writing their own papers. This mistake probably made it more read than 99% of all other scientific papers.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Patrizsche@lemmy.ca 23 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Daaaaamn they didn't even get consent from the patient😱😱😱 that's even worse

[–] Frenchy@aussie.zone 15 points 6 months ago

I mean holy shit you’re right, the lack of patient consent is a much bigger issue than getting lazy writing the discussion.

[–] N4CHEM@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 months ago

It's removed from Elsevier's site, but still available on PubMed Central: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11026926/#

The worse part is, if I recall correctly, articles are stored in PubMed Central if they received public funding (to ensure public access), which means that this rubbish was paid with public funds.

[–] clearedtoland@lemmy.world 43 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Hold up. That actually got through to publishing??

[–] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 30 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's because nobody was there to highlight the text for them.

[–] exscape@kbin.social 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The entire abstract is AI. Even without the explicit mention in one sentence, the rest of the text should've been rejected as nonspecific nonsense.

[–] canihasaccount@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's not actually the abstract; it's a piece from the discussion that someone pasted nicely with the first page in order to name and shame the authors. I looked at it in depth when I saw this circulate a little while ago.

[–] exscape@kbin.social 8 points 6 months ago

Ah, that makes more sense. I looked up the original abstract and indeed it looks more like what you'd expect (hard to comprehend for someone that's not in the field).

Though to clarify (for others reading this) they still did use generative AI to (help?) write the paper, which is only part of why it was withdrawn.

[–] Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Many journals are absolute garbage that will accept anything. Keep that in mind the next time someone links a study to prove a point. You have to actually read the thing and judge the methodology to know if their conclusions have any merits.

[–] clearedtoland@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Full disclosure: I don’t intend to be condescending.

Research Methods during my graduate studies forever changed the way I interpret just about any claim, fact, or statement. I’m obnoxiously skeptical and probably cynical, to be honest. It annoys the hell out of my wife but it beats buying into sensationalist headlines and miracle research. Then you get into the real world and see how data gets massaged and thrown around haphazardly…believe very little of what you see.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Ragdoll_X@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

yea lol

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1930043324004096

I've recently been watching a lot of videos on prominent cases of fraud and malpractice like Francesca Gino, Claudine Gay, Hwang Woo-suk, etc., which prompted me to start reading more into meta-research as well, and now I'm basically paranoid about every paper I read. There's so much shady shit going on...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] hydroptic@sopuli.xyz 6 points 6 months ago

It's Elsevier, so this probably isn't even the lowest quality article they've published

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 40 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I started a business with a friend to automatically identify things like this, fraud like what happened with Alzheimer's research, and mistakes like missing citations. If anyone is interested, has contacts or expertise in relevant domains or just wants to talk about it, hit me up.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Google Retraction Watch. Academia has good people already doing this.

https://www.crossref.org/blog/news-crossref-and-retraction-watch/

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] match@pawb.social 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What's the business model? (How does that generate revenue?)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 6 months ago

what if this was actually just a huge troll, and it wasn't AI.

Now that would be fucking hilarious.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 22 points 6 months ago

I would insert specific language into every single one of my submissions to see if my editors were doing their jobs. Only about 1/3 caught it. Short story long, I'm not just a researcher in a narrow field, I'm also an amateur marine biologist.

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] soloner@lemmy.world 19 points 6 months ago

Guys it's simple they just need to automate AI to read these papers for them to catch if AI language was used. They can automate the entire peer review process /s

[–] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

They mistakenly sent the "final final paper.docx" file instead of the "final final final paper v3.docx". It could've happen to any of us.

[–] Nobody@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago

In Elsevier's defense, reading is hard and they have so much money to count.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 12 points 6 months ago

It's OK, nobody will be able to read it anyway because it's on Elsevier.

[–] SuperCub@sh.itjust.works 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
[–] SSJ2Marx@hexbear.net 8 points 6 months ago

I won't even post to Hexbear without rereading my post and editing spelling/grammar errors, how do people submit research papers that will effect their professional reputation without doing it?

[–] anzo@programming.dev 6 points 6 months ago

All MDs, no PhDs. I wouldn't have read that anyway, but rejected instead of publishing hehe. "Long live the system!" /s

load more comments
view more: next ›