Live data from Hacker News

New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

twitter.com

151–160 of 242 posts

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#151
post #2

https://xcancel.com/tdietterich/status/2055000956144935055

> Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated (Dieterrich, T. G.)

coauthors about to get roasted

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#152
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is fraud. I think we are talking semantics here. While fraud does require intention to deceive, I get the sentiment that hallucinated citations shouldn't be dismissed as simply carelessness. It should be something stronger than that: gross negligence or something MUCH stronger! There should absolutely be repercussions for this. But let's not call it fraud. That word is reserved for something specific. EDIT: some…

I do believe this policy is appropriate to deal with the reckless disregard of posting hallucinated references. It's a conscious decision to not take the time to check your AI output, and instead waste a whole bunch of other people's time letting them essentially do that for you in duplicate. Feels like that should disqualify you from participation for a bit. Intent or no intent.

100% agreed.

Doing your job poorly means giving more work to others and, consequently, stealing their time, their most precious asset.

Many here don't agree with this ban because they work in IT, where this immoral and antisocial behavior is normalized.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#154
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just one darn hallucinated citation for heaven's sake, not fraud or something. It is fraud. > It doesn't account for the substance or quality of their work at all. References are part of the work. If you're making up the references, what else are you making up? > People make mistakes and a good fraction of them can learn from those mistakes. There's no need to permanently cripple someone's ability to progress…

> In an ideal world, one would be keeping notes on references used In a far less than ideal world authors are referencing papers they've at least read the title and abstract of. In an ideal world, authors would be only referencing works they have read in their entirety. I don't think we need to live in the ideal world[0], but let's also not pretend the ideal world is even remotely out of reach. Let's also be honest t…

Even as a human, you can still fuck up references.

I submitted a paper with a reference author as Elisio because I couldn’t read my own handwriting. After submitting, I double checked all the references through an LLM. It pointed out that their name was actually Enrique. Yes, you should probably double check your references before submitting, not after.

Point is, I didn’t even trust the LLM at first. But after verifying the mistake, I was embarrassed af. I resubmitted with the fixes before it went live, but ultimately, what’s the difference between “mistake” and “hallucination”?

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#155
post #4

> The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue. This is incredibly good for science. arXiv is free, but it's a privilege not a right! I'm not seeing this clearly listed on https://info.arxiv.org/help/policies/index.html so it's possible this is planned but not live yet - or perhaps I'm not digging deeply…

My take: this seems excessive. ArXiv doesn't even check the submission closely, so how can they know? They say "errors, mistakes" They use an automated system to check if the basic requirements were met, and sometimes papers are flagged for further superficial human review, but there is no way they can possibly do this at scale or check every reference. This would be like trying to do peer review, but for a preprint…

> ArXiv doesn't even check the submission closely, so how can they know?

They can be informed by people who read the papers and check the citations. A zero-tolerance policy provides an incentive to report sloppy papers (namely, that you can be confident something will be done about it), and each time a paper is removed or an author is banned, it incrementally increases the value of the arXiv as a whole.

> Being required to publish in a peer reviewed journal will close off arxiv for many researchers for good.

At the end of the day, demanding that people carefully proofread their LLM-generated papers before sharing them on the arXiv seems like a relative low bar to clear, and I sort of question whether it's reasonable to call individuals who find it too onerous "researchers" in the first place.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an ideal world, one would be keeping notes on references used In a far less than ideal world authors are referencing papers they've at least read the title and abstract of. In an ideal world, authors would be only referencing works they have read in their entirety. I don't think we need to live in the ideal world[0], but let's also not pretend the ideal world is even remotely out of reach. Let's also be honest t…

Even as a human, you can still fuck up references. I submitted a paper with a reference author as Elisio because I couldn’t read my own handwriting. After submitting, I double checked all the references through an LLM. It pointed out that their name was actually Enrique. Yes, you should probably double check your references before submitting, not after. Point is, I didn’t even trust the LLM at first. But after verify…

I assume they won’t ban anyone automatically without a way to object. Using your example, i wouldn’t assume they would enforce the ban if you object and explain your typo and if the corrected citation actually says what you cited. Mistakes like these are explainable a completely hallucinated citation is usually not.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#157

Seeing the usual LLM hypers angry replying to this on twitter is such a tell. Just like the comments on the LLM poisoning articles, some people just can't accept that some people don't like LLMs and get upset when you put any amount of hindrance to their rapid acceptance.

> some people don't like LLMs

It's not even that they "don't like LLMs". They just don't like academic fraud! If references were fabricated with a Markov chain it would be just as bad!

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying it as if the poor author just had no choice but to let LLM write their bibliography. To avoid hallucinations, maybe just don't let an LLM write any part of your paper? You can only get in this situation if you let a bullshit generator write your paper, and the fraud is that you are generating bullshit and calling it a paper. No buts. It's impossible to trigger this accidentally, or without reckless disr…

Calling LLMs "bullshit generators" in the year 2026 just shows a lack of seriousness.

Not as much of a lack of seriousness as excusing away hallucinations as not that big of a deal in what's supposed to be a researched, scholarly body of work written by humans.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated (Dieterrich, T. G.)

coauthors about to get roasted

To be a coauthor on a preprint that you have not submitted, you have to actively "claim" it (using a password given to the author who submitted). It's on you to double-check before claiming.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem incredibly upset you can't get away with fraud and that people are calling it fraud.

> You seem incredibly upset you can't get away with fraud and that people are calling it fraud. Yeah, that's exactly what I've been upset about. You really nailed it!

I hope you don't do science because this is how reputation get tainted.
Post reply on HN