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Asking authors about their own papers

234 points · 119 comments · stefanpie

  1. fn-mote · · focus · HN ↗
    The Medium comments on this post are also on point. Running the same experiment with accepted papers is a good control. Running a similar experiment with reviewers would be interesting, but more obnoxious because they are not being paid.

    I would keep a private blacklist (shadow ban) the authors who wasted several hours of a reviewer's time to prove they were not legitimate. The existence of such a list would be problematic, though.

    Could the same system we use here be applied? Accepted authors could "vouch" for "dead" papers in case they were "auto-killed"?

    This system is broken and providing more evidence that it is broken isn't much of a step towards fixing it.

    1. nkrisc · · focus · HN ↗
      It strikes me as akin to plagiarism. If the purported author can’t even answer basic questions about the paper, how can they plausibly claim to have written it?

      In the case where someone uses AI to write the paper and then deeply familiarizes themself with it, it may go undetected, but then it’s also presumably less of an issue since they have actually read it carefully and closely. If it’s still bad or wrong after that, then it’s not that different from a human writing a bad or wrong paper on their own and should be treated similarly.

      1. jedbrown · · focus · HN ↗
        Yes. The cognitive process performed by a person using an LLM is often no different from that performed by a person using a ghost author, which is a form of plagiarism covered by 42 CFR § 93.234 - Research misconduct.

        Plagiarism, at its most fundamental level, is a lie. It is the taking of works or ideas of others and passing them off as your own, either directly or indirectly. The misdeed itself is in the lie, the “I created this” when it is known to be untrue.

        However, that lie isn’t being told to the original victim. It’s a lie about the victim, claiming that they didn’t create it or their contributions didn’t matter, but it’s not a lie to them. Instead, it’s a lie to the audience, which is the second victim and the actual target of the con.

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.plagiarismtoday.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;08&#x2F;01&#x2F;the-two-victims-of-plagiarism&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.plagiarismtoday.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;08&#x2F;01&#x2F;the-two-victims-o...

        1. figassis · · focus · HN ↗
          This is a very good definition, but today people will just claim the AI is not a victim, and pass this argument off to the legal cases the labs are already having in court wrt fair use. It&#x27;s sad, but this is the argument people have made to themselves.
          1. michaelt · · focus · HN ↗
            The ‘real author’ isn’t the only injured party.

            Copying from a book with a long dead author, or paying a willing confederate to write your thesis for you, is still plagiarism.

            1. LadyCailin · · focus · HN ↗
              In academic settings, it’s also plagiarism to copy your own previous work. Given that, I’m not sure academia gets to take the high ground on what constitutes misconduct or not wrt to plagiarism, at least in the edge cases.
              1. cycomanic · · focus · HN ↗
                It&#x27;s often denoted plagiarism or self plagiarism as a short cut. While it&#x27;s probably better denoted duplicate publication (or similar) it still constitutes a similar academic misconduct, because you&#x27;re pretending something is novel without it being novel

                As a side note quite often it can actually be literal plagiarism as well, many journals require you to assign copyright, so using that work without attribution is plagiarism.

          2. nkrisc · · focus · HN ↗
            The status of the true author is kind of irrelevant to whether it’s plagiarism or not. The true author may even be an active participant in the conspiracy.
          3. tmoertel · · focus · HN ↗
            But the public is still made a victim by being deceived about the authorship and hence the value and reliability of the work.
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