I don't know how they actually do it, but I would imagine that an obvious placeholder citation could be treated less severely than a hallucinated citation. In o

I don't know how they actually do it, but I would imagine that an obvious placeholder citation could be treated less severely than a hallucinated citation. In one, every reader is immediately alerted to the error, similar to a typographical or formal error. In the other, the error goes undetected until/unless someone checks.