Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up? If not, you might want to pass on purchasing "Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced", published by Springer Nature in April, 2025.
Based on a tip from a reader, Retraction Watch checked 18 of the 46 citations in the book. Two-thirds of them either did not exist or had substantial errors. And three researchers cited in the book confirmed the works they supposedly authored were fake or the citation contained substantial errors.
Nonexistent and error-prone citations are a hallmark of text generated by large language models like ChatGPT. These models don’t search literature databases for published papers like a human author would. Instead, they generate content based on training data and prompts. So LLM-generated citations might look legitimate, but the content of the citations might be fabricated.
