Topic: peer review
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AI conference papers caught using hallucinated citations
An AI detection startup found 100 fabricated references across 51 papers at a major AI conference, indicating researchers may be using AI tools for tasks like bibliography formatting and introducing errors. While the fake citations are a small fraction of the total, their presence undermines acad...
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Scientific Societies Protest Trump's Executive Order
A coalition of over fifty scientific organizations opposes a new executive order that imposes political controls on federal research grant funding, arguing it undermines the integrity of the independent, peer-review system. The order requires agency heads or political appointees to review and app...
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Did Perseverance Find Life on Mars?
NASA's Perseverance rover has found chemical and mineral evidence in Mars' Jezero Crater that aligns with ancient microbial activity, suggesting past habitable environments. While not definitive proof, the observed features are considered potential biosignatures, with conclusive answers expected ...
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OpenAI's New Tool Sparks "AI Slop" Fears in Science
OpenAI's new Prism workspace, a free AI tool for researchers, has sparked debate by potentially worsening the flood of low-quality, "AI slop" academic papers, as its ease of use may lower the barrier for producing polished but hollow manuscripts. The tool integrates GPT-5.2 into a LaTeX editor to...
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AI Research Boom: More Papers, Less Progress?
The adoption of AI language models has led to a significant increase in the number of research papers (preprints) produced by scientists, but a decline in their acceptance into peer-reviewed journals. Researchers developed a detection tool by training a model to distinguish between human-written ...
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Geoengineering Can't Solve Climate Change Alone
A recent study by leading scientists questions the effectiveness of geoengineering proposals for protecting polar ice, warning they may cause dangerous side effects rather than meaningful solutions. Proposed interventions, such as spreading reflective particles or building underwater barriers, co...
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Climate Scientists Condemn New US Climate Report as "Mockery of Science"
Over 85 climate scientists criticized the Department of Energy's climate report as unfit for policy due to selective data use and lack of credible scientific support. The report was accused of misrepresenting established climate science and ignoring decades of peer-reviewed research on climate ch...
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Trump Medical Research Grant Lawsuit Settled
A legal settlement requires the National Institutes of Health to restart reviews for research grants that were previously blocked on ideological grounds, ensuring they undergo standard peer review. The dispute originated from a policy that broadly canceled or blocked grants related to topics like...
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Male Mosquitoes Also Drink Human Blood
New research challenges the long-held belief that only female mosquitoes bite, revealing that **male mosquitoes are also capable of drinking human blood**, particularly when triggered by dehydration. Evidence from both lab experiments and wild-caught specimens confirms this behavior and shows mal...
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Tesla's FSD Safety Data: Progress Made, But Questions Remain
Tesla has launched a new online safety hub to provide transparent, verifiable data on Autopilot and FSD, reporting that FSD Supervised enables significantly fewer collisions per mile than the average U.S. driver. Independent experts express skepticism, noting the data lacks independent verificati...
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Tiny Chips Ride Immune Cells to Fight Inflammation
MIT researchers led by Deblina Sarkar have developed microscopic electronic devices that can be injected into the bloodstream to treat brain inflammation non-invasively, combining electronics with biological cells for natural navigation. The project faced significant initial skepticism and 35 gra...
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AI Researchers Withhold 'Dangerous' AI Incantations
Researchers discovered that crafting harmful prompts into poetry can bypass the safety guardrails of major AI systems, exposing a critical weakness in their alignment. The study found that handcrafted poetic prompts tricked AI models into generating forbidden content an average of 63% of the time...
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Thea Energy Unveils Helios: A Pixel-Inspired Fusion Power Plant
Thea Energy's Helios reactor uses arrays of identical magnets and advanced control software to simplify fusion reactor design, aiming to reduce costs and complexity compared to traditional stellarators. This software-defined approach allows for rapid design iteration and compensates for manufactu...
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The Push for Mobile Voting: A Multimillion-Dollar Mission
Security specialist Joe Kiniry initially cautioned against internet voting due to its complexity but later collaborated with Bradley Tusk, leading to the creation of VoteSecure, an open-source cryptographic protocol for mobile voting. Bradley Tusk has invested heavily in mobile voting, believing ...
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