this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Study featuring AI-generated giant rat penis retracted entirely, journal apologizes::A peer-reviewed study featured nonsensical AI images including a giant rat penis in the latest example of how generative AI has seeped into academia.

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Me:

Impactful world news: Pass

Troubling local US news: Pass

News about giant rat penis: Click

sips coffee slowly

[–] [email protected] 86 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

I hate the way AI is being used here, but those labels are fucking GOLD.

  • Senctollic stem cells
  • Dizlocttal stem ells
  • Dissilced
  • Rat
  • Testtomcels
  • Iollotte sserotgomar cell
  • Spermatocial stem cells
  • Stenm cells
  • Retat
  • dck
[–] [email protected] 42 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's like trying to read in a dream

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

At least it correctly labelled the Rat, but kinda missed the dck

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago

See Figure 1 for a diagram of retat dck

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago
  • Air vent
  • Fan
  • Saddam Hussein
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I loved the labels. Testtomcels.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Ever tried to see what happens when you request “an anatomical diagram of a spider, school book style”. I mean, just start by counting the legs, and once you’ve stopped laughing you can dive into the labels. It’s going to be wild. If you’re into microbiology, try asking for a similar diagram of a prokaryotic cell for extra giggles.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well that’s a headline I didn’t expect to see this morning.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of AI generated images, it’s quite concerning something like this makes it into a scientific journal at all.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, the Journal is at a huge loss of credibility with this. Their entire purpose is to be respectable and review submissions with a high degree of scrutiny.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Frontiers in isn't the greatest journal to begin with

[–] [email protected] 45 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] nieceandtows 7 points 7 months ago

Stuart Hugh Mungus

[–] [email protected] 44 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It's not so much the use of AI that's upsetting as it is the "peer review" process. There needs to be a massive change in how journals review studies, before reasonable people start to question every study based on cases like this. How many false studies are currently used for important shit that we just haven't caught yet?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

It got published, people noticed it, people saw it was bullshit, it got retracted. Publishing is not the end of the line.

It's an extreme example, but it's still an example of the system working in the end. Reasonable people are supposed to question what they read, not blindly trust it, that's how you catch "important shit".

The problem is not that some bad papers get published. The problem would be them staying unchallenged. And it's also a problem that laymen consider one random study is an undeniable proof of their argument (potentially ignoring the thousands of studies contradicting it).

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Of course some things will always slip through the cracks, but this is egregious. What does their peer-review process look like that this passed through it?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

Right? Even when skimming papers, it's usually: read title & abstract, look at figures, skim results & conclusion. If you don't notice that the figure doesn't have real words, how is anyone making sure the methodology makes sense? That the results show what the conclusion says they show?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I am not disagreeing that this is ridiculous, I was just saying that this stupidity is not what should convince people not to take some random paper for an absolute truth, just because it was published.

Even if you eliminate fraud, bullshit and even honest mistakes, that's just not how science works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

A shame most people are trained by both the school system and society to just take things at face value

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

An even greater shame is that almost no people are trained on basic statistics and think they can debunk a published study in PNAS with a Google search and some random guys blog.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago (3 children)

ai is going to speedrun us into idocracy, isn’t it? why learn when you can ask dr. sbaitso to just do it for you?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's certainly not helping.

We're already dealing with the problem of half the (US) population only believing things when they align with their political views and now on can't even Google something and be sure that the entire first page of results isn't SEO AI hallucinated misinformation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

“Search engine optimized artificial intelligence hallucinated misinformation”

Omg, we are in a cyberpunk dystopia aren’t we?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Peer review was already a joke, as exposed a couple years ago by two researchers who got a paper full of BS published.

It's been wells established that nearly all published research papers are irreproducible.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

How long until there’s an accepted study of the benefits of electrolytes on plants. Probably already exists in gatoraids filing cabinet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Doctooore Sbaitso, please enter your name.

Man I wondered if I'd ever talk to anyone else that used it. I liked asking him to pronounce "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz", and he actually did a pretty good job.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I support a law that all AI voices must use the Dr. Sbaitso voice. Imagine the impressive inefficiency of training an AI voice with the output from a 1980’s? Sound blaster.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (3 children)

A few things came together for me here.

The paper had two reviewers, one in India and one based in the U.S.

.

"...a reviewer of the paper had raised concerns about the AI-generated images that were ignored."

.

...the U.S.-based reviewer who said that they evaluated the study based solely on its scientific merits and that it was up to Frontiers whether or not to publish the AI-generated images...

.

"The authors failed to respond to these requests. We are investigating how our processes failed to act on the lack of author compliance... "

They don't outright say it in the article, but it looks like the reviewer based in India was the one who actually raised concerns about the garbage images. The authors were supposed to respond, but didn't, and the journal published anyway.

I will readily admit that this is just my own conclusion here, but -- I wonder if there was an element of racism that went into ignoring the reviewer's concerns?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Why do you bring up race? Is there anything that would imply that?

People are lazy and incompetent as fuck, and it's been an industry wide problem that publishing companies in general have lower and lower standards of quality.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

I brought it up purely as speculation, as one possible explanation for why the process was not properly followed. I don't have any experience with publishing companies, whether for science journals or otherwise.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Check out their controversies section on Wikipedia. This doesn't seem out of character for this publication. It's more likely incompetence than malice.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (2 children)

AI generated medical research can't make it past peer review, it can't hurt you

AI generated medical research that made it past peer review:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I mean "made it past"...

The 2 reviewers both brought up the images as weird, and the journal published anyways, so...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Giant rat penises will only hurt you if you have an underlying medical condition (anal fissures, etc).

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago

The paper was authored by three scientists in China, edited by a researcher in India, reviewed by two people from the U.S. and India, and published in the open access journal Frontiers in Cell Development and Biology on Monday. 

Now THAT is Maximum Trolling. I hope someone at Cell Development got fired

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I was out in the snow and mine retracted entirely as well.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

"I WAS IN THE POOL!!!!!"

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

South Park strikes again

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Jesus, talk about getting rat fucked.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Time for a "dick of a rat" joke

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

At first I was like "Why" and then I realized the study was about rat penises and not about AI so now I'm furious and I hope that researcher's school rescinds his degrees.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Trust the science

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago