131–140 of 223 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> felt the need to work while ill in bed, with very little sleep and sick with fever You are assuming that... He says he currently has a fever. But was he sick when he wrote the article? That is not so clear.
He was, it's in the first paragraph > I have been sick with COVID all week /../, while working from bed with a fever and very little sleep, I unintentionally made a serious journalistic error in an article about Scott Shambaugh.
I see a lot of negative comments on this retraction about how they could have done it better. Things can always be done better but I think the important thing is that they did it at all. Too many 'news' outlets today just ignore their egregious errors, misrepresentations and outright lies and get away with it. I find it refreshing to see not just a correction, but a full retraction of this article. We need to encoura…
Respectfully, I find this to be an unwarranted positive reaction to have toward this situation. What other action could Ars possibly take as a journalistic business? The quotes are indisputably false. This is hardly a praise-worthy action to take. It's the expected and required action. With regard to editorial review, an editor didn't catch the error. The target of the false quotes had to register on Ars and post a c…
Most people would have had no hope and nobody would ever know.
Benj Edwards, one of the authors, accepted responsibility in a bluesky post[0]. He lists some extenuating circumstances[1], but takes full responsibility. Time will tell if it's a one-off thing or not I guess. [0] https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p [1] your mileage may vary on how much you believe it and how much slack you want to cut him if you do
That's a poor mea culpa. It begins with a preamble attempting to garner sympathy from the reader before it gets to the acknowledgement of the error, which is a sleight-of-hand attempt to soften its severity.
That’s not sleight-of-hand, I think we all immediately recognize it for what it is. Whether it is good form to lead with an excuse is a matter of opinion, but it’s not deceptive.
People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.
Yes. This is being treated as thought it were a mistake, and oh, humans make mistakes! But it was no mistake. Possibly it was a mistake on the part of whoever was responsible for reviewing the article before publication didn't catch it. But plagiariasm and fabrication require malicious intent, and the authors responsible engaged in both.
My wife, former journalist, said that you don’t direct quote anyone without talking to them first and verifying what you’re quoting is for sure from them. The she said “I guess they have no editors?” because in her experience editors aren’t like fact checkers but they’re suppose to have the experience and wisdom to ask questions about the content to make sure everything is kosher before going to print. Seems like multiples errors in judgement from multiple parts of the organization.
(My wife left journalism about 15 years ago so maybe things are different but that was her initial reaction)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's on the AI beat, if he is unaware that a chatbot will fabricate quotes and didn't verify them that is a level of reckless incompetence that warrants firing
Yeah! We can call things reckless incompetence without calling them malice!
I see a lot of negative comments on this retraction about how they could have done it better. Things can always be done better but I think the important thing is that they did it at all. Too many 'news' outlets today just ignore their egregious errors, misrepresentations and outright lies and get away with it. I find it refreshing to see not just a correction, but a full retraction of this article. We need to encoura…
Respectfully, I find this to be an unwarranted positive reaction to have toward this situation. What other action could Ars possibly take as a journalistic business? The quotes are indisputably false. This is hardly a praise-worthy action to take. It's the expected and required action. With regard to editorial review, an editor didn't catch the error. The target of the false quotes had to register on Ars and post a c…
Former technology journalist here. If you want to experiment with reported news using untested tools that have known quality problems, do it in a strictly controlled environment where the output can be carefully vetted. Senior editor(s) need to be in the loop. Start with something easier, not controversial or high-profile articles. One other thing. If the author cut corners because he's too sick to write, but did so…
It sounds like you're implying that's what happened here, but I don't see any of that in the article. Was additional info shared elsewhere?
Edit: oh, I see links to the article author's social media saying this. Nevermind my question, and I agree.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He was, it's in the first paragraph > I have been sick with COVID all week /../, while working from bed with a fever and very little sleep, I unintentionally made a serious journalistic error in an article about Scott Shambaugh.
That's words, not facts.
Ok, what sort of facts would you accept here?
Ars were caught with their pants down. We have no reason to believe otherwise. It isn't possible to prove otherwise. We as readers are lucky ars quoted someone who disabled LLM access to their website, causing the hallucination and giving us a smoking gun.
Clawing back credibility will be hard
Bluesky post by Benj (one of the authors of the article). https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p He admits to using an AI tool, says he was sick and did dumb things. He does clear Kyle (the other author).