Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature (nature.com)

• AI tools are mass-producing fraudulent citations.
• Peer review frameworks are failing to detect synthetic fabrications.
• Systemic erosion of academic knowledge repositories.

"The unchecked integration of Large Language Models in academic writing is resulting in an epidemic of hallucinated citations. These synthetic references—where AI generates plausible-sounding but non-existent papers—pose a critical risk to the reproducibility and integrity of scientific research. The issue challenges the efficacy of traditional peer review, as automated plagiarism and misinformation become increasingly difficult to distinguish from genuine peer-reviewed scholarship, threatening the foundational knowledge base of the scientific community."