Academic journal forced to retract peer-reviewed AI-generated paper after "rat penis" pics go viral

3 years ago by Deykun to c/science

FaceDeer 30 points 3 years ago

It's the "peer-reviewed" part that should be raising eyebrows, not the AI-generated part. How the gibberish images were generated is secondary to the fact that the peer reviewers just waved the obvious nonsense through without even the most cursory inspection.

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Nawor3565 16 points 3 years ago

In another article, it said that one of the reviewers did being up the nonsense images, but he was just completely ignored. Which is an equally big problem.

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bedrooms 5 points 3 years ago

It's how this publisher works. They make it insanely difficult for reviewers to reject a submission.

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YMS 2 points 3 years ago

It's in this article.

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oyfrog 5 points 3 years ago

I've heard some of my more senior colleagues call frontiers a scam even before this regarding editorial practices there.

It's actually furstratingly common for some reviewer comments to be completely ignored, so it's possible someone raised a flag and no one did anything about it.

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Jesusaurus 5 points 3 years ago

Frontiers has something like a 90%+ publish rate, which for any "per reviewed" journal is ridiculously high. They have also been in previous scandals where a large portion of their editorial staff were sacked (no pun intended).

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oyfrog 1 point 3 years ago

They sent me an email once inviting me to be a guest editor. I thought it would be a cool experience and a neat thing to have on the CV.

I mentioned it to my advisor at the time and they told me that frontiers does that pretty often and that these special issues don't amount to anything.

Frontiers isn't alone of course. MDPI is notorious for shitty editorial practices too.

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bedrooms 2 points 3 years ago

The biggest problem with Frontiers for me is that there are some handy survey articles that are cited like 500 times. It seems that Interdisciplinary surveys are hard to publish in a traditional journal, and as a result 500 articles cited this handy overview article for readers who would need an overview.

The article I checked was in a reasonable quality, and it's a shame I can't cite it just because it's in Frontiers.

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MotoAsh 4 points 3 years ago

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bedrooms 1 point 3 years ago

Actually, figures should be checked during the reviewing process. It's not an excuse.

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MotoAsh 1 point 3 years ago

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bedrooms 1 point 3 years ago

No, "should be" as in, it must be reviewed but can be skipped if there's a concern like revealing the author identity in a double-blind process.

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Froyn 7 points 3 years ago

I enjoy reading between the lines. "Had the rat penis not gone viral, the paper would not have been retracted"

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EmptyRadar 5 points 3 years ago

We're in that interim period where people don't understand the technology at all but still think it's capable of anything, so even people who absolutely should know better are going to be misusing it.

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eran_morad 3 points 3 years ago

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Deykun 2 points 3 years ago

The paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/...

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young_broccoli 1 point 3 years ago

Reminds me of this.

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sheepishly 1 point 3 years ago

Sokal affair but with more rat ballz

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TimeSquirrel 1 point 3 years ago

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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on scientific discoveries, research, and theories across various fields, including physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and more. Whether you are a scientist, a science enthusiast, or simply curious about the world around us, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on a wide range of scientific topics. From the latest breakthroughs to historical discoveries and ongoing research, this category covers a wide range of topics related to science.

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