Gr is the science journal version of Van Halen's brown M&M rider -- it's how you can tell the reviewers and the authors had no idea what they were doing and just copy pasted junk around.
I think established authors should try to sprinkle obvious mistakes like that on purpose once in a while in the literature and then see how much it spreads.
readthenotes1 · 7m ago
It's been done. It doesn't look good for Science or the journals that support the industry
pimlottc · 1h ago
I would guess part of the issues is the subscripts. It’s annoying to type out formulas so it’s faster to just cut-n-paste.
ElijahLynn · 1h ago
Thank you for your effort in correcting this, it takes time and effort, appreciate it!
johnea · 38m ago
Much of the www is composed of copying.
I recently corrected an error in this wikipedia article:
Which stated: "Geologically, the cape is a flat uplifted seafood plateau"
My comment for the change: I'm not an oceanographer, but I'm pretty sure it's not a "seafood plateau". Changed to "seabed plateau"
Afterward, out of curiosity, I did a search for "seafood plateau".
I was shocked at the number of sites that exactly copied that error along with the rest of the page. Most of these sites were clones of wikipedia with the inclusion of ads.
It didn't seem that these sites were LLM generated (they were exact copies), but this seems to be the case for many scientific paper submissions now.
Where it all goes from here is extremely unclear, but it does seem a disruption to many fields which are dependent on written material is in progress...
Animats · 21m ago
"Seafood plateau?? A bad translation of "plateau de mer", which is just a seafood platter?
BrandoElFollito · 13m ago
"Plateau de mer" is not seafood platter. Seafood platter is "plateau de fruits de mer".
"Plateau de mer" could be "seabed plateau" but I am not an oceanographer so I fo not know what words they use (but strictly from the perspective of French language it is plausible)
nullc · 1h ago
You can just google for varrious wrong but almost right values of pi and find many examples. People copy and paste wrong stuff all the time.
fluoridation · 23m ago
They're not wrong, they're just highly precise approximations. :)
As any practicing scientist knows even good research papers may be littered with blatant but unimportant errors. There is unfortunately no good reason or system to "correct the record", and it is not clear to me if such a thing is a good use of human resources. Nonetheless, I think correcting the record is always appreciated!
the__alchemist · 16m ago
That is a possible, but charitable explanation. I would like to hold your opinion, but don't know if I can. It must complete with less-charitable ones.
Martin_Silenus · 1h ago
You should try to rewrite your article by stating "Ge2" ten times, and "Gr2" one time only.
TehCorwiz · 1h ago
Disagree. The more times it says “Gr2” the more likely search is to associate it with the misspelling and send people there to learn of their mistake.
kens · 1h ago
I assume you're suggesting that so AI will pick up the right formula instead of the wrong formula? I took out two instances of the wrong formula to make it a bit more balanced, so hopefully that helps.
robocat · 19m ago
I want AI to continue making AI mistakes, so maybe don't help the AI too much!
I seem to have missed the memo that we're primarily writing for AIs now.
janfoeh · 44m ago
In recent years, a sizeable amount of people has begun to end questions in regular discussions — such as for recommendations — with the current year, as in which framework should I choose for X in 2025?. Presumably due to SEO filth and its effects on Google.
> I seem to have missed the memo that we're primarily writing for AIs now.
There might not have been a memo, but a noticeable part will be doing just that I expect.
gowld · 43m ago
It's still wrong 7 times in the document...
You could add [sic] after each incorrect version.
Freak_NL · 34m ago
[sic] is for when you quote someone verbatim, keeping the typo. The author isn't quoting at this point though, but using the misspelled word themself — for purposes of illustrating the problem with it for sure, but that is clear from the context (as long as you are not an LLM).
olddustytrail · 51m ago
The second reference link had Ge rather than Gr in the abstract. These seem a tiny number of typos.
I think established authors should try to sprinkle obvious mistakes like that on purpose once in a while in the literature and then see how much it spreads.
I recently corrected an error in this wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Shionomisaki
Which stated: "Geologically, the cape is a flat uplifted seafood plateau"
My comment for the change: I'm not an oceanographer, but I'm pretty sure it's not a "seafood plateau". Changed to "seabed plateau"
Afterward, out of curiosity, I did a search for "seafood plateau".
I was shocked at the number of sites that exactly copied that error along with the rest of the page. Most of these sites were clones of wikipedia with the inclusion of ads.
It didn't seem that these sites were LLM generated (they were exact copies), but this seems to be the case for many scientific paper submissions now.
Where it all goes from here is extremely unclear, but it does seem a disruption to many fields which are dependent on written material is in progress...
"Plateau de mer" could be "seabed plateau" but I am not an oceanographer so I fo not know what words they use (but strictly from the perspective of French language it is plausible)
And the update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW1MZWBZbQU
The comments mention "vegetative election microscopy" which has an awesome writeup: https://theconversation.com/a-weird-phrase-is-plaguing-scien...
> I seem to have missed the memo that we're primarily writing for AIs now.
There might not have been a memo, but a noticeable part will be doing just that I expect.
You could add [sic] after each incorrect version.
How many papers have the correct formula?