AI hallucinations flood biomedical papers
fabricated citations in biomedical papers increased more than twelvefold since 2023 due to suspected ai use.
researchers auditing 2.47 million biomedical papers found fabricated citations increased more than twelvefold between 2023 and early 2026. the rate jumped from 4 to 56.9 per 10,000 papers, correlating with the timeline for ai-generated text to enter peer review. these hallucinations are dangerous because they infiltrate review articles that inform clinical guidelines, potentially compromising evidence chains. authors attribute the spike to language models and recommend automated screening before publication and retroactive database cleaning.