Researchers from major universities, including Waseda University in Tokyo, have been found to have inserted secret prompts in their papers so artificial intelligence-aided reviewers will give them positive feedback.
The revelation, first reported by Nikkei this week, raises serious concerns about the integrity of the research in the papers and highlights flaws in academic publishing, where attempts to exploit the peer review system are on the rise, experts say.
The newspaper reported that 17 research papers from 14 universities in eight countries have been found to have prompts in their paper in white text — so that it will blend in with the background and be invisible to the human eye — or in extremely small fonts. The papers, mostly in the field of computer science, were on arXiv, a major preprint server where researchers upload research yet to undergo peer reviews to exchange views.
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