info
Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
AI-generated nonsense about rat with giant penis published by leading scientific journal
9 views
Skip to first unread message
Julian
Feb 20, 2024, 1:35:53 PMFeb 20
to
Warning over 'dangerous era' of scientists faking their work using AI
after publication of 'shameful' diagrams and illustrations
https://huffpost-focus.sirius.press/2024/02/16/29/0/1380/776/1820/1023/75/0/40e6f76_1708098412112-1708029360494-screen-shot-2024-02-15-at-30922-pm.png
It might be considered an AI cock-up on a massive scale.
A scientific paper purporting to show the signalling pathway of sperm
stem cells has met with widespread ridicule after it depicted a rodent
with an anatomically eye-watering appendage and four giant testicles.
The creature, labelled “rat”, was also sitting upright in the manner of
a squirrel, while the graphic was littered with nonsensical words such
as “dissilced”, “testtomcels” and “senctolic”.
A cut-away image showed “sterrn cells” in a Petri dish being picked up
with a spoon.
It appeared in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology
this week alongside several other absurd graphics that had been
generated by the AI tool Midjourney.
They included a multicoloured JAK-STAT signalling pathway diagram which
experts likened to “some crazy level of Candy Crush” and said was not
grounded in “any known biology”.
The paper, written by researchers at the Honghui Hospital in China, has
since been retracted by the journal, which issued an apology and said it
was working to “correct the record”.
Dangers of faked research
But several scientists have expressed concern as to how it was published
in the first place, and warn it heralds a dangerous era of researchers
faking their work using AI.
Adrian Liston, professor of pathology at Cambridge University and editor
of the journal Immunology & Cell Biology, said: “Generative AI is very
good at making things that sound like they come from a human being. It
doesn’t check whether those things are correct.
“It is like an actor playing a doctor on a TV show – they look like a
doctor, they sound like a doctor, they even use words that a doctor
would use. But you wouldn’t want to get medical advice from the actor.
“The JAK figure is even worse than the rat figure, in my opinion. There
are simply meaningless connections and lines that don’t associate with
any known biology.”
He added: “The problem for real journals is getting harder, because
generative AI makes it easier for cheats.
“It used to be really obvious to tell cheat papers at a glance. It is
getting harder, and a lot of people in scientific publishing are getting
genuinely concerned that we will reach a tipping point where we won’t be
able to manually tell whether an article is genuine or a fraud.”
Other scientists took to social media to describe the graphics as
“absolutely shameful” and “devastating”, while some said they didn’t
know “whether to laugh or cry”.
Prof John Tregoning, of Imperial College London, said the graphics were
“objectively funny” but “have no place in science journals”.
A good laugh
Writing on the Science Integrity Digest, Dr Elisabeth Bik, the Dutch
microbiologist who works spotting manipulation in scientific papers,
said: “Of course, we can have a good laugh at these figures, and wonder
how on earth the handling editor and the two peer reviewers didn’t catch
this.
“But the paper is actually a sad example of how scientific journals,
editors, and peer reviewers can be naive in terms of accepting and
publishing AI-generated crap.
“These figures are clearly not scientifically correct, but if such
botched illustrations can pass peer review so easily, more
realistic-looking AI-generated figures have likely already infiltrated
the scientific literature.”
Dr Bik has identified more than 1,000 papers which have fraudulent
imagery, most of which she believes was generated by AI.
Companies are attempting to develop software that will detect
AI-generated content and in the future it may be watermarked, but
currently there is no way to spot it unless it is glaringly wrong.
A spokesman for Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology said: “We
thank the readers for their scrutiny of our articles: when we get it
wrong, the crowdsourcing dynamic of open science means that community
feedback helps us to quickly correct the record.”
The Telegraph has approached the authors for comment.
after publication of 'shameful' diagrams and illustrations
https://huffpost-focus.sirius.press/2024/02/16/29/0/1380/776/1820/1023/75/0/40e6f76_1708098412112-1708029360494-screen-shot-2024-02-15-at-30922-pm.png
It might be considered an AI cock-up on a massive scale.
A scientific paper purporting to show the signalling pathway of sperm
stem cells has met with widespread ridicule after it depicted a rodent
with an anatomically eye-watering appendage and four giant testicles.
The creature, labelled “rat”, was also sitting upright in the manner of
a squirrel, while the graphic was littered with nonsensical words such
as “dissilced”, “testtomcels” and “senctolic”.
A cut-away image showed “sterrn cells” in a Petri dish being picked up
with a spoon.
It appeared in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology
this week alongside several other absurd graphics that had been
generated by the AI tool Midjourney.
They included a multicoloured JAK-STAT signalling pathway diagram which
experts likened to “some crazy level of Candy Crush” and said was not
grounded in “any known biology”.
The paper, written by researchers at the Honghui Hospital in China, has
since been retracted by the journal, which issued an apology and said it
was working to “correct the record”.
Dangers of faked research
But several scientists have expressed concern as to how it was published
in the first place, and warn it heralds a dangerous era of researchers
faking their work using AI.
Adrian Liston, professor of pathology at Cambridge University and editor
of the journal Immunology & Cell Biology, said: “Generative AI is very
good at making things that sound like they come from a human being. It
doesn’t check whether those things are correct.
“It is like an actor playing a doctor on a TV show – they look like a
doctor, they sound like a doctor, they even use words that a doctor
would use. But you wouldn’t want to get medical advice from the actor.
“The JAK figure is even worse than the rat figure, in my opinion. There
are simply meaningless connections and lines that don’t associate with
any known biology.”
He added: “The problem for real journals is getting harder, because
generative AI makes it easier for cheats.
“It used to be really obvious to tell cheat papers at a glance. It is
getting harder, and a lot of people in scientific publishing are getting
genuinely concerned that we will reach a tipping point where we won’t be
able to manually tell whether an article is genuine or a fraud.”
Other scientists took to social media to describe the graphics as
“absolutely shameful” and “devastating”, while some said they didn’t
know “whether to laugh or cry”.
Prof John Tregoning, of Imperial College London, said the graphics were
“objectively funny” but “have no place in science journals”.
A good laugh
Writing on the Science Integrity Digest, Dr Elisabeth Bik, the Dutch
microbiologist who works spotting manipulation in scientific papers,
said: “Of course, we can have a good laugh at these figures, and wonder
how on earth the handling editor and the two peer reviewers didn’t catch
this.
“But the paper is actually a sad example of how scientific journals,
editors, and peer reviewers can be naive in terms of accepting and
publishing AI-generated crap.
“These figures are clearly not scientifically correct, but if such
botched illustrations can pass peer review so easily, more
realistic-looking AI-generated figures have likely already infiltrated
the scientific literature.”
Dr Bik has identified more than 1,000 papers which have fraudulent
imagery, most of which she believes was generated by AI.
Companies are attempting to develop software that will detect
AI-generated content and in the future it may be watermarked, but
currently there is no way to spot it unless it is glaringly wrong.
A spokesman for Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology said: “We
thank the readers for their scrutiny of our articles: when we get it
wrong, the crowdsourcing dynamic of open science means that community
feedback helps us to quickly correct the record.”
The Telegraph has approached the authors for comment.
0 new messages