- Researchers identified 4,046 fabricated references across 2,810 biomedical papers after screening nearly 2.5 million articles.
- Papers containing fabricated references increased from approximately 1 in 2,828 papers in 2023 to 1 in 277 papers in early 2026.
- Fabricated references were defined as citations whose titles could not be verified in major scientific databases or Google Scholar.
- Many fabricated citations appeared highly convincing, using real author names, plausible topics, and believable publication years.
- Review articles showed a 57% higher fabrication rate compared with other publication types.
- Researchers noted that large language models are known to generate fictitious but realistic-looking scientific references, although causation was not directly studied.
- More than 98% of affected papers had received no publisher action, such as correction or retraction, at the time of analysis.
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