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I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

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Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#71

Post by tollgategit »

azan_ wrote: post #24
jsrozner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk if we're automating humans out of the publishing loop as much as rapidly automating the production of crap. I had a very similar experience reviewing for EMNLP recently. We are nowhere near AI being able to judge the quality of research (in fact, one might reasonably state that even most humans can't really judge the quality of research). Most things in society are not like math: we can't automate (via verificati…

People should get paid for reviewing. That’s the solution. Publishing companies rack in billions of dollars in pure profit exploring free labor. Once people actually get paid for reviewing, it becomes much faster and higher quality and you won’t need AI triage.

Alternatively, put the pressure on the incoming requests for review.

Pay a deposit to have your work reviewed, if it's accepted as a good faith submission, the deposit is returned minus a minimal, irrelevant fee, if it is deemed in bad faith, take all of the deposit as a time-waste tax. With enough cases going wrong, the flood of slop slows down and maintainers have to pull the trigger as often.

This was the solution several people had proposed for Git issues, but none that I know of took the plunge. I really think curl should have done that.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#72

Post by thrownphone »

totetsu wrote: post #43
nneonneo wrote: post #2

At this point, in the field of AI research: - papers are written by AI (as pointed out in this article, and as obvious to anyone who spends a while actually reading recent AI research) - papers are reviewed by AI (NeurIPS is doing an AI assisted review experiment - https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2026/ai-reviewing-experiment - and I feel the trend is moving towards AI reviewers whether we like it or not) - papers are…

I have been rolling over the idea of “reasoning deserts” in my head, akin to food deserts. Places where economic calculations lead to only a facsimile of the real thing being provided, without the actual components necessary for human health, wellbeing and flourishing.

I'm from there. AMA

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#73

Post by ludicrousdispla »

jsrozner wrote: post #11
nneonneo wrote: post #2

At this point, in the field of AI research: - papers are written by AI (as pointed out in this article, and as obvious to anyone who spends a while actually reading recent AI research) - papers are reviewed by AI (NeurIPS is doing an AI assisted review experiment - https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2026/ai-reviewing-experiment - and I feel the trend is moving towards AI reviewers whether we like it or not) - papers are…

Idk if we're automating humans out of the publishing loop as much as rapidly automating the production of crap. I had a very similar experience reviewing for EMNLP recently. We are nowhere near AI being able to judge the quality of research (in fact, one might reasonably state that even most humans can't really judge the quality of research). Most things in society are not like math: we can't automate (via verificati…

The 'named' reviewers typically pass on the review responsibilty to grad students or less-senior colleagues. This is currently a generally accepted and sanctioned/encouraged practice. A social scoring system would need to eliminate that for true accountability.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#74

Post by low_tech_love »

“…because conferences have made it mandatory to review 4-5 papers if you submit to them.”

Is that really a thing? So if I submit a legit paper it is being reviewed forcefully by a bunch of random people from god knows where?

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#75

Post by low_tech_love »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32
nneonneo wrote: post #2

At this point, in the field of AI research: - papers are written by AI (as pointed out in this article, and as obvious to anyone who spends a while actually reading recent AI research) - papers are reviewed by AI (NeurIPS is doing an AI assisted review experiment - https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2026/ai-reviewing-experiment - and I feel the trend is moving towards AI reviewers whether we like it or not) - papers are…

> We are very rapidly automating humans out of the academic publication loop We are rendering it irrelevant. If this is the norm for academia, I’m sympathetic to the folks looking to cut its funding.

This is the truth. As a researcher, I say good riddance. It was always kinda stupid, AI is just accelerating the demise of something that hasn’t worked correctly for a few decades now. The time is way overdue for us to figure out some other system.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#76

Post by weiliddat »

ludicrousdispla wrote: post #73
jsrozner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk if we're automating humans out of the publishing loop as much as rapidly automating the production of crap. I had a very similar experience reviewing for EMNLP recently. We are nowhere near AI being able to judge the quality of research (in fact, one might reasonably state that even most humans can't really judge the quality of research). Most things in society are not like math: we can't automate (via verificati…

The 'named' reviewers typically pass on the review responsibilty to grad students or less-senior colleagues. This is currently a generally accepted and sanctioned/encouraged practice. A social scoring system would need to eliminate that for true accountability.

Yeah it's a well-known secret, and I think any sort of scoring system misses the point. The scentific method (and system, incl. peer reviews) is a public good (like good governance) that requires moral acknowledgement, the necessary social/cultural/political/academic pressures, and discipline of taking care of it by participating parties.

If you add a score/metric this incentivizes the wrong thing, like how money, funding, and career already incentivizes all the wrong non-scientific behaviors (like faking data, p-hacking, etc.)

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#77

Post by low_tech_love »

nneonneo wrote: post #2

At this point, in the field of AI research: - papers are written by AI (as pointed out in this article, and as obvious to anyone who spends a while actually reading recent AI research) - papers are reviewed by AI (NeurIPS is doing an AI assisted review experiment - https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2026/ai-reviewing-experiment - and I feel the trend is moving towards AI reviewers whether we like it or not) - papers are…

It’s important to notice that flagged papers were still accepted; anyone who spends any time around researchers knows the fact that most people are salivating over AI. That’s why they don’t want to punish it, they’re also using it. And they don’t want to create an environment where it is overly punished, at least not while they can take advantage of it. There is only a small amount of serious people complaining, but in my experience the opinion of the vast majority is “stop worrying and learn to love it”. Which brings to the surface a very harsh reality: almost nobody gave a damn about the science to begin with.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#78

Post by voxelghost »

kingstnap wrote: post #7

https://arxiv.org/stats/monthly_submissions They should consider swapping this for a log plot. I can imagine in 2027 academia looking like Moltbook.

Since the log trend seemingly started before the age of LLMs papers - cant we just innocently hope that this reflects increasing popularity of prepublishing on arxivx?

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#79

Post by vladms »

low_tech_love wrote: post #75
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are very rapidly automating humans out of the academic publication loop We are rendering it irrelevant. If this is the norm for academia, I’m sympathetic to the folks looking to cut its funding.

This is the truth. As a researcher, I say good riddance. It was always kinda stupid, AI is just accelerating the demise of something that hasn’t worked correctly for a few decades now. The time is way overdue for us to figure out some other system.

I feel this is a case of "perfect the enemy of good". Looking at the output (scientific progress in biology, medicine, material physics, etc.) the "something" seems to have worked well. Could it be optimized? Probably. Should we completely destroy it and hope a new system will be better? My read of history is that in many cases the new ideas were worse of what they were replacing and it took a long time for a fix.

So, if you have ideas of a new, better system let's talk about those, before getting happy something gets destroyed and hope someone else will come with a better solution.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#80

Post by emil-lp »

low_tech_love wrote: post #74

“…because conferences have made it mandatory to review 4-5 papers if you submit to them.” Is that really a thing? So if I submit a legit paper it is being reviewed forcefully by a bunch of random people from god knows where?

That's correct. And 4–5 is low-balling.

I was forced to review 7 papers.

Now, how are these papers chosen for you?

You get to bid on which to review.

Bid on 30 papers out of 30,000.

I got none of those, and I had to review 7 papers I wasn't really competent enough to review.

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