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I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

geospatialml.com

July 30, 2026

19 min read

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56/100

Summary

Of 22 paper submissions reviewed from NeurIPS, WACV, and TerraBytes, 15 (68%) included fabricated citations, fake author lists, or content generated by language models that displayed hallucinated technical jargon and irrelevant citations. This phenomenon is referred to as being in the "slop trenches," indicating challenges in handling low-quality AI-generated outputs.

Key Takeaways

68% of 22 reviewed paper submissions contained fabricated citations, fabricated author lists, or were clearly LLM-generated.
An audit estimated that approximately 146,900 hallucinated citations appeared in 2025 publications across various platforms.
A Lancet audit found the incidence of papers with at least one fabricated reference increased six-fold from 2023 to early 2026.
21% of reviews for ICLR 2026 were fully AI-generated, with over half having some form of AI involvement.

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Community Sentiment

Negative

Positives

The trend of AI reviewing papers is fascinating, suggesting a future where AI could streamline the academic process — but is it really ready for prime time?
Open accessibility to papers could drastically reduce the validation issues we're seeing, making research more accountable and transparent.

Concerns

We're rapidly automating the production of junk research, and AI still can't judge quality — it's a recipe for disaster.
If AI takes over the publication process, it risks making academia irrelevant and could lead to a return to elitist cliques in research.