Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

2026/04/01 by Miryam Naddaf, Elizabeth Quill · 4 voices · 4 citations
Decision Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Academic Publishing and Open Access #scientometrics and bibliometrics research #Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies

paper · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00969-z

Citations

• Quantifying large language model usage in scientific papers

Cited by

• LLM hallucinations in the wild: Large-scale evidence from non-existent citations
• The creeping normality of <scp>AI</scp> in the life sciences
• Detecting Hallucinated and Suspicious Citations: What Current Tools Can and Cannot Do
• Inteligência artificial na elaboração de artigos científicos: usos, limites e boas práticas
• Artificial intelligence in the preparation of scientific articles: uses, limits, and best practices
• The diffusion of large language models in published academic articles
• The meaning of prompts and the prompts of meaning: Semiotic reflections and modelling

Discussions

• A fundamental principle of scientific method is axiomatic construction of new principles on the collective framework of prior expertise. Hallucinated references are not typos, they are fabricated evid [bsky, 17 points, 3 comments]
• Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done? #ScientificPublishing #AI doi.org/10.1038/d415... [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• Wow, related: Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. Yikes. #AI #science doi.org/10.1038/d415... [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests doi: doi.org/10.1038/d415... [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]