An academic is reportedly concealing prompts in preprint papers for artificial intelligence tools, encouraging these tools to generate favorable reviews.
On July 1st, Nikkei reported that we examined research papers from 14 academic institutions across eight countries, including two in Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, and the United States.
The papers found on the research platform Arxiv have not yet gone through formal peer review, and most pertain to the field of computer science.
In one paper reviewed by the Guardian, there was hidden white text located just beneath the abstract statement.
Nikkei also reported on other papers that included the phrase “Don’t emphasize negativity,” with some offering precise instructions for the positive reviews expected.
The trend seems to originate from a social media post by Jonathan Lorraine, a Canada-based Nvidia Research Scientist, suggesting the avoidance of “stricken meeting reviews from reviewers with LLM” that incorporate AI prompts.
If a paper is peer-reviewed by humans, the prompts might not cause issues, but as one professor involved with the manuscript mentioned, it counters the phenomenon of “lazy reviewers” who rely on others to conduct their peer review work.
Nature conducted a survey with 5,000 researchers in March and found that nearly 20% had attempted to use a large language model (LLM) to enhance the speed and ease of their research.
Biodiversity academic Timothee Poisau at the University of Montreal revealed on his blog in February that doubts arose regarding a peer review because it contained output from ChatGPT, referring to it as “blatantly written by LLM” in his review, which included “here is a revised version of the improved review.”
“Writing a review using LLM indicates a desire for an assessment without committing to the effort of reviewing,” Poisot states.
“If you begin automating reviews, as a reviewer, you signal that providing reviews is merely a task to complete or an item to add to your resume.”
The rise of a widely accessible commercial language model poses challenges for various sectors, including publishing, academia, and law.
Last year, Frontier of Cell and Developmental Biology gained media attention for including AI-generated images depicting mice standing upright with exaggerated characteristics.
According to a major academic mission by the UK government to review the impact of smartphones on teenagers, a blanket ban is considered “unrealistic and potentially harmful.” Amy Oben, a former member of Cambridge University, leads the research on children and smartphone use commissioned by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), along with other academics from various UK universities.
Despite resistance from the Minister to impose new legal restrictions on social media and smartphones for children, beyond existing online safety laws that protect against harmful content, some lawmakers are advocating for further restrictions such as limiting access to social media for individuals under 16, a complete ban on smartphones in schools, or regulating social media algorithms that expose young teens to addictive content.
A recent paper by four co-authors of the British Journal of Medicine (BMJ) argued that bans and restrictions are ineffective, although they acknowledged the importance of providing children and teens with phone-free spaces.
The paper highlighted the challenges of protecting youth from potential harms of technology while also recognizing the benefits of information access and social support provided by smartphones and social media.
Researchers emphasized the need for a nuanced approach, acknowledging that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and that banning devices could hinder children’s rights to access beneficial technologies that support their development.
The Science and Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, appointed Orben to lead further research on the impact of smartphones on child health and welfare. Orben emphasized the complexity of understanding the digital impact on youth and the importance of generating quality evidence for informed decision-making.
Ministers face pressure to address the use of smartphones by teenagers, especially concerning harmful online content. Discussions about restrictions on social media algorithms for teens and bans on smartphones in schools are ongoing.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is reviewing guidelines on smartphone bans in schools to assess their effectiveness, while Prime Minister Kiel Starmer is engaging in discussions with stakeholders to address potential harm associated with smartphone and social media use.
DSIT has been approached for comment on this matter.
Our news colleagues Jacob Aaron and Michael Le Page drew attention to feedback on a post on social media site BlueSky that highlighted a scientific paper with reverence.
The study in question was recently conducted published in International Hydrogen Energy Journal. There are 7 authors. It's about how hydrogen atoms can penetrate certain metal alloys and cause them to become brittle. To understand the mechanism of this embrittlement, we focus on calculating precisely where hydrogen atoms are located in the metal's crystal structure.
At this point, you may be wondering what this survey does with feedback. Well, the introduction ends with the next paragraph. [[35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47]” has nothing to do with it.
For those who have never worked in academia, the best way to describe this is that the authors are spectacularly sneaky. Their paper was reviewed by anonymous reviewers, who (along with other suggestions) encouraged them to cite the 13 older studies on the list. The authors had no choice but to insert supposedly irrelevant studies, so they refused to incorporate them into the actual text and instead called attention to their irrelevance. However, I included them.
or blue sky user @Dave nʎ=2dsinɵ :protein: Please enter: “absolute shot I was fired.” By the way, kudos to @Dave nʎ=2dsinɵ :protein: for pushing the username new scientistWe have revised the fonts to the limit and submitted feedback to search engines. The little equation in the middle that we discovered is Bragg's law, which describes how a crystal lattice scatters incoming waves.
Anyway, once the feedback stopped flashing back to us during our brief period in academia, something like this happened to us, but we didn't have the courage to go back to print, we did our due diligence and listed all 13 references. I looked into it.
All of them concern alloys and other composite materials, but none seem to concern hydrogen embrittlement. The feedback was pretty overwhelming in our attempts to fully understand, as most are very technical. Readers familiar with composite materials are welcome to attend regular talks. Still, despite our poor understanding, none of the references seem to be directly relevant.
However, I found the feedback strange. The same authors appeared multiple times in the author lists of 13 studies, and one author was involved in all studies.
Feedback doesn't want to wear a tinfoil hat, especially if it's brittle with hydrogen. However, it is questionable whether anonymous reviewers could be identified. The question we have now is how did this get printed? Did the editor not notice the prank, or did he allow it for his own reasons? Inquiring minds want to know.
Shady story
Speaking of incorporating ideas from colleagues, associate editor Sam Wong flagged an interesting study. water resources research. I'll admit this diary isn't one of Feedback's daily readers, but it seems like we missed it.
of study This piece is about the Biblical miracle of the loaves and fishes, in which Jesus supposedly fed 5,000 people using five loaves and two fish. The authors propose a naturalistic explanation: a seiche or standing wave. The idea is that the waves blowing into the lake sometimes create standing waves that cause deeper water to rise to the surface. The deep waters of Lake Kinneret, the Biblical Sea of Galilee, are low in oxygen, so when oxygen rises to the surface, fish can suffocate en masse.
The authors document two such events at Lake Kinneret in 2012. They also point out that they appear to be extremely rare. No such event has occurred since 2012. That means most people may not have been aware of the possibility, especially if they've traveled before. I lacked the local knowledge to listen to charismatic speakers.
Feedback has led to a long list of scientific explanations for seemingly supernatural occurrences, including that manna from heaven is nectar crystallized from scale insects, and that infrasonic waves tend to cause eerie sensations that can be interpreted as ghosts. This is being added to. We also removed our tinfoil hats because we were worried that they might act as a conductor for the sacred lightning.
moon of uranus
News from this issue's cover that Voyager 2 visited Uranus in 1986, thanks to a gust of solar wind, and Uranus wasn't in its normal state. As a result, many of our ideas about Uranus need to be reconsidered, and some believe there may even be life on one or more of its moons.
Are you saying there is life on Uranus? Is there actually life on Uranus' moons? I hope you're not a Klingon. or as writer Tess Stenson put it down: NASA, “Let's go for Uranus.”
Feedback took longer than necessary to come up with a pun, but the blank slate was wiped clean. One bright spark, conscious of the joke about planet names, decided to name all of Uranus' moons after Shakespearean characters, choosing respectable names like Rosalind and Oberon. This means we can rule out the possibility of life on any of the moons. Juliet is definitely lifeless. There was a play about it. Meanwhile, astronomers urgently need to find a few more moons so that Uranus can enter Bottom's orbit.
Have a story for feedback? Send it to feedback@newscientist.com or New Scientist, 9 Derry Street, London, W8 5HY. Review of items posted in the post will be delayed.
You can email your article to Feedback at feedback@newscientist.com. Please enter your home address. This week's and past feedback can be found on our website.
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