Fake citation panic has arrived. A paper was recently published in the Lancet that audited 2.5 million biomedical papers for fabricated citations; i.e., “references whose claimed titles correspond to no existing publication”. The headline finding was that 1 in 277 papers contained fake citations.
The response to the paper’s publication has been varied but at times close to hysterical, including this news article in Nature: Surge in fake citations uncovered by audit of 2.5 million biomedical-science papers.
The Lancet paper itself has a few problems in the way it presents the results, finally settling on the most heart-stopping number (#Affected_Papers/#Papers), which was 1 paper in every 227. An “affected paper” is one with at least a single fabricated citation. If you look at the data in terms of total references, fake citations are extremely low: 4046/97.1 million≈0.0042%.
The seriousness of the problem also needs to be put against the backdrop of general error rates in citations pre-AI. The rate was around 15% with 9% being major errors “in which the referenced source either fails to substantiate, is unrelated to, or contradicts the assertion”. In other words, citation unreliability predates LLMs and occurs at rates vastly exceeding outright fabrication. Assuming the fabricated citations found in the Lancet paper are attributable to AI, they have added a tiny quanta to a substantial existing problem.
As academic researchers, we also need to be honest about how we use the literature in the development of a paper, and the extent to which a fake citation is actually doing load-bearing epistemic work. Remember, fake citations that assert complete nonsense are valueless to the author because they act as flags of authorial ineptitude. A “good” fake citation is one that says nothing too controversial and supports the general thrust of normal science.
There are five potential, non-load bearing, reasons for adding citations:
1. Credentialling. Signalling to reviewers and readers that you belong to the field, have done the reading, know the players. It is a display of club membership.
2. Tribute. Citing the people who might review your paper, your supervisor, your allies. It is a social currency. Although it happens less now, it was relatively common practice for anonymous reviewers to suggest a citation to be included in a resubmission: i.e., you forgot to cite ME!
3. Defensive armour. Pre-empting the reviewer who asks “but what about X?” You cite X, even cursorily, to close the objection.
4. Territorial marking. Establishing your position in an intellectual lineage. “I stand in this tradition, not that one.”
5. Apparent support. Your actual use case. Finding something that gestures in the direction of your claim.
All of these reasons for citation have important sociological roles in the production of science. Many could also support a fake citation, and none of them (with the possible exception of “apparent support”) do substantial epistemic load-bearing. This is plausibly why the fake (inappropriate) citation rates pre-AI had made so few waves in the academic world. The citations are intellectual grease that move the paper forward. Failure to sprinkle citations throughout would condemn a paper to the bin–never even getting further than the editor’s desk.
The people with most to fear from fake citations are perhaps bibliometricians, the researchers who treat citation counts as meaningful measures of scientific quality and impact. The fact that they readily get through the peer-review process is a strong signal that they are not doing heavy work within the paper.
An examination of the Supplementary Material of the Lancet paper is also revealing. In Appendix 2 the authors provide “Illustrative Examples of Suspected Fabricated References”. In each case they misquote the actual text associated with the reference. They do not simply compress the quote, they substitute words and meaning.
Example A:
The increase in ICU admissions in the post-implementation group suggests that more individuals survived initial injuries and required intensive care, aligning with findings by Doe and Smith.
The increase in ICU admissions in the post-implementation group suggests that more severe cases required intensive care, possibly due to the application of stricter monitoring and care protocols for high-risk patients (Doe and Lee 2023; Doe and Smith 2023; Smith and Johnson 2020).
Example B:
MRI excels in soft tissue visualization and compositional assessment; CT offers superior bone detail and faster acquisition, with emerging dual-energy techniques adding material differentiation capabilities.
MRI excels in soft tissue visualization and compositional assessment; CT offers superior bone structure characterization; ultrasound provides dynamic, real-time evaluation; and nuclear medicine techniques, including positron emission tomography (PET), capture metabolic and molecular processes [88,89,90].
Example C:
Activation of P2X7 promotes astrocyte differentiation, and astrocytes can secrete inflammatory mediators, which further promote the activation of microglia and ultimately contribute to the development of chronic pain.
Activation of P2X7 promotes astrocyte differentiation, and astrocytes can secrete D-serine, a co-agonist at NMDARs, to enhance both homo- and heterosynaptic long-term potentiation (LTP (146)).
The examples are not neutral summaries of the original text. The altered wording makes the fabricated citations appear more epistemically important than they are in the source papers.
A statement supported by multiple citations, one of which is fabricated, is not the same as a statement appearing to rest on a single fabricated citation (Examples B and C). A fabricated citation linked to a statement that makes anodyne and uncontroversial observations about imaging techniques (Example B) is not doing substantial epistemic work. A statement that “more severe cases required intensive care” is far more cautious than the stronger causal interpretation that “more individuals survived initial injuries” (Example A).
The irony here is difficult to miss. A paper warning about fabricated citations strengthens its case through altered quotations that make the offending references appear more epistemically consequential than they are in the source papers themselves.
The Lancet paper identifies a real phenomenon. Fabricated citations exist and appear to be increasing, although they currently are a marginal problem in the grand scheme of academic literature. But the examples in the supplementary appendix suggest that the dominant failure mode is not fabricated evidence supporting radical falsehoods. More often, the fake citations appear attached to background claims, disciplinary signalling, or low-load rhetorical scaffolding. That does not make them acceptable, but it does matter for understanding the scale and nature of the problem.
The more interesting question is not simply whether a citation exists, but what work it is doing in the argument. A fake citation attached to intellectual grease is very different from fabricated evidence entering a meta-analysis or clinical guideline. Treating all citation failures as equivalent obscures the distinction between bibliographic error, rhetorical inflation, and genuine epistemic corruption.