Audit Reveals Surge in Fake Citations in Biomedical Science Papers, Raising Concerns Over Generative AI
An audit of 2.5 million academic papers has uncovered nearly 3,000 biomedical-science papers containing fake references, according to a study published in The Lancet. The audit, which is the first of its kind to estimate the scale of fake citations in biomedical literature, utilized an automated pipeline to screen papers from PubMed Central, a database of publicly accessible biomedical articles, published between January 2023 and February 2026. The study identified 2,564 papers with one or two fabricated references and 246 papers with three or more. The findings suggest a significant increase in the number of publications with fabricated citations, with 12 times more such publications in 2025 compared to 2023. The study's authors, including AI researcher Maxim Topaz from Columbia University, believe the problem is likely underestimated and point to a potential generative AI component in the growth of fake citations. 
