> Let's assume you didn't have a pre-existing knowledge of "what are real, reputable journals for scientific research"? (As opposed to being in a "real world" c

> Let's assume you didn't have a pre-existing knowledge of "what are real, reputable journals for scientific research"? (As opposed to being in a "real world" community where that's institutional knowledge, where you would be looking to curate your internet usage instead of trusting the full public one). I'm not an academic, so I don't actually have much in the way of "institutional knowledge". My understanding of academic publishing is mostly just stuff I've worked out by observing it from the outside, not through actual membership of any of the communities it serves. I'm sure there are (discipline-specific) nuances and complexities that an actual academic would understand to which I am completely oblivious, but it is entirely possible to get a mostly-accurate high-level understanding of that space without having any personal links to any academic community. For PubMed at least, consider the fact it has a .GOV domain, and the "An official website of the United States government" banner at the top. Sure, anyone can fake that banner, but faking the .GOV is a fair bit harder. I really doubt the US government is going to start hosting databases filled with fake AI-generated research papers. Even if someone hacked a .GOV website and uploaded such a database to it, it surely wouldn't last long; meanwhile, PubMed has been at the exact same web address for the last several years. Nobody approaches the Internet as a tabula rasa – everyone comes to it with some pre-existing "real world" knowledge. How do I know ".GOV" is reserved for US governmental entities? I was probably first introduced to that fact by a book or magazine article I read in high school, but I've since seen it repeated too many times to individually recall. I remember having a conversation with my brother (a doctor) about PubMed – I didn't learn about it from him, I was the one who introduced the topic into the conversation, but his response confirmed that it is a real thing to which actual medical professionals refer, as opposed to some AI-generated phantasm.