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From: Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: ChatGPT contributing to current science papers
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2024 11:29:40 +0100
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On 10/08/2024 22:32, RonO wrote:
> https://phys.org/news/2024-08-junk-ai-scientific-publishing.html
> 
> Several examples of scientists using AI to write papers with AI 
> generated mistakes that passed peer review.  I noted before that ChatGPT 
> could be used to write the introductions of papers, sometimes, better 
> than the authors had done.  One example of a figure manipulation 
> indicates that some authors are using it to present and discuss their 
> data.  That seems crazy.  ChatGPT doesn't evaluate the junk that it is 
> given.  It just basically summarizes what they feed into it on some 
> subject.  I used a graphic AI once.  I asked it to produce a picture of 
> a chicken walking towards the viewer.  It did a pretty good job, but 
> gave the chicken the wrong number of toes facing forward.  Apparently 
> junk like that is making it into science publications.
> 
> With these examples it may be that one of the last papers that I 
> reviewed before retiring earlier this year was due to AI.  It was a good 
> introduction and cited the relevant papers and summarized what could be 
> found in them, but even though the authors had cited previous work doing 
> what they claimed to be doing, their experimental design was incorrect 
> for what they were trying to do.  The papers they cited had done things 
> correctly, but they had not.  I rejected the paper and informed the 
> journal editor that it needed substantial rewrite for the authors to 
> state what they had actually done.  What might have happened is that the 
> researchers may have had an AI write their introduction, but it was for 
> what they wanted to do, and not for what they actually did.  English was 
> likely not the primary language for the authors, and they may not have 
> understood the introduction that was written.  If they had understood 
> the introduction, they would have figured out that they had not done 
> what they claimed to be doing.  Peer review is going to have to deal 
> with this type of junk.  The last paper that I reviewed in March came 
> with instructions that the reviewers were not to use AI to assist them 
> with the review, but it looks like reviewers are going to need software 
> that will detect AI generated text.
> 
> Ron Okimoto
> 

I can understand why journals would not want to authors to use AI in 
writing papers*, but why would they not want reviewers to use AI tools 
if they can assist in reviewing the paper?

* Even so, the AI rubric includes translation tools (authors might write 
text in their native language, and use AI for a first pass translation 
into English), and the spelling/grammar/style checker Grammerly now 
includes AI features.

-- 
alias Ernest Major