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ON A.I. COMMENTARIES, ELEPHANT HIJINKS, AND TRUMP CLIMATE IGNORANCE PART 1
THERE ARE TIDBITS A’PLENTY in scientific matters, as reported in Science, publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow are three contrasting aspects.
A.I.-Generated Commentaries Flood Journals, Distort Metrics. Scientific journals typically have peer review to assess the significance of technical papers prior to their being published. And after publication, commentaries— essentially “letters to the editor”—add to the subject matter. Together, the totality of citations becomes something of a rating system on a paper’s relevance. Loosely, Prof. Nobody becomes Prof. Somebody, at least in part based on the number of citations.
Unless these commentaries, which generally have no peer review, are churned out by Artificial Intelligence. Frederik Joelving, Retraction Watch, describes this lamentable practice in “Shoddy Commentaries—a Quick and Dirty Route to High Impact Numbers—Are On The Rise,” Science, December 17, 2024.
Joelving observes that A.I.-generated commentaries “now make up 70% of the content in Elsevier’s Oral Oncology Reports, and nearly half in Wolters Kluwer’s International Journal of Surgery Open. At Neurosurgical Review, a Springer Nature title [which recently put a hold on the practice], letters, comments, and editorials comprised 58% of the total output from January to October—up from 9% last year. More than 80% of these commentaries are from South Asian countries, compared with fewer than 20% of research and review articles.”
Image by Master1305/Shutterstock via Science.
Essentially, lazy researchers are finding it easier to activate A.I. than to do actual research; this, despite the recognized tendency for such Large Language Model A.I. to generate occasional hallucinations.
Joelving cited how “…in the preceding 2 months, three authors from one university in India had published ‘an astonishing 69 comments’ in the journal. Nearly all of them appeared to be machine written and lacked substantive relevance,’….. The publications also cited ‘irrelevant’ works from other researchers at the same institution as the authors—Saveetha University.”
Furthermore, Joelving notes, “Saveetha, which hosts India’s top dental school, has a history of manipulating metrics to improve its rankings. A 2023 investigation by Science and Retraction Watch found the institution coerced students write thousands of research papers during exams that were then furnished with inappropriate citations to other Saveetha works. Retraction Watch later reported that the school offered payments to prolific authors around the world for listing it as an affiiiation on their publications.”
Geez.
I’d swap the diligent work of Retraction Watch for DOGE in an instant.
Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll lighten up a bit with elephants and with weatherman Trump wielding a Sharpie. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025
Simanaitis Says 
Since Bratman, aka Oswald Cobblepot, Orange Julius, Trumpty Dumpty, thrives on attention–witness hawking his Trump brand bottled water during national disasters — am thinking a media boycott, no more coverage, ignoring everything coming from his uneducated mouth would unhinge him, be the worst thing that could happen to him. We know, we know. Democracy dies in darkness.
But another four years of this loudmouth daddy’s bubble boy poser from Queens’ daily bleats and empty proclamations, don’t know if i can take it, sports fans.
As John Cleese observed the first time this clown wound up in the Oval Office, “I think we have to accept that 35-40 million Americans are morons.” Certainly, these are Bratman’s adherents, and he doesn’t own the entire judicial system.
Such magnificent sites as SimanaitisSays are great succor, refuge to and for those of us valuing knowledge, genuine accomplishment.
But might we be the butterflies in South Ame — below the “Gulf of America” that start the tornado in Kansas, by pressing what media we can to stop giving this buffoon what he most craves?
Agree, but it’s a losing battle for the media. They do what sells (papers) and gets (clicks/views). So unless you want your news dominated by Fox, WashTimes, NYPost, OAN, and the like you have to accept that Hizzoner’s face will appear everywhere as usual.
As for weather, Accuweather etc. (pay for your weather forecasts, and don’t use the word “climate”!!) have wanted to shut down the public-facing NOAA operations (i.e. competition) for a long time. They may get it this time around, including naming rights for all the storms. They still need the govt to run the satellites, but they don’t want it to be any more than a closed-access (for corporate use only) data warehouse, no interpretation.
Right y’are, Mike, certainly in this day of corporate journalism, the same sorry bottom line miasma that undid the once erudite humor of Dennis’s longtime domicile, Road & Track.
Am afraid the me-too, pile on “journalism” will continue, but we retain the ability not just to laugh at it, but trivialize it however we can.
It is a sorry state of affairs when most J-school grads now go into PR instead of delivering the vetted news without which democracy cannot endure.
That leaves more weight on us grownups to rail against the dying of the light.