4 ms·

It strikes me as akin to plagiarism. If the purported author can’t even answer basic questions about the paper, how can they plausibly claim to have written it?

• CrazyStat 15d ago
  > It strikes me as akin to plagiarism. If the purported author can’t even answer basic questions about the paper, how can they plausibly claim to have written it? Authorship standards differ by field. In biology, for example, it would be common to list someone as an author if they assisted in one experiment. They might be at a different institution and may be unaware of all but the vaguest outline of the paper as a whole—they just got brought onboard because they are an expert in one particular task that needed to be done. In exchange they get to be a middle author (not worth much) and develop a relationship with someone whose expertise they may need on one of their own papers in the future (the primary benefit). That is not the case here, of course—I just wanted to provide some context for your position not being universally applicable.
  • nkrisc 14d ago
    That’s fair, I should have clarified that I was thinking about the solo authors when I wrote that.
  • kamma4434 14d ago
    Makes sense, but first and last author should be able to answer on all the work
    • CrazyStat 14d ago
      One would hope so, yes.
    • jltsiren 14d ago
      Only in small papers. Once the project is big or multi-disciplinary enough that co-first and co-last authorship become a thing, it's quite common that no single person fully understands the paper.
    • robwwilliams 14d ago
      Ideally, but often not true of large complex studies. Typical example is that only a middle author statistician understands the details of data analysis. Also commonly true in quantitative genetics.
• jedbrown 14d ago
  Yes. The cognitive process performed by a person using an LLM is often no different from that performed by a person using a ghost author, which is a form of plagiarism covered by 42 CFR § 93.234 - Research misconduct. Plagiarism, at its most fundamental level, is a lie. It is the taking of works or ideas of others and passing them off as your own, either directly or indirectly. The misdeed itself is in the lie, the “I created this” when it is known to be untrue. However, that lie isn’t being told to the original victim. It’s a lie about the victim, claiming that they didn’t create it or their contributions didn’t matter, but it’s not a lie to them. Instead, it’s a lie to the audience, which is the second victim and the actual target of the con. https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/08/01/the-two-victims-of-plagiarism/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/08/01/the-two-victims-o...
  • figassis 14d ago
    This is a very good definition, but today people will just claim the AI is not a victim, and pass this argument off to the legal cases the labs are already having in court wrt fair use. It's sad, but this is the argument people have made to themselves.
    • michaelt 14d ago
      The ‘real author’ isn’t the only injured party. Copying from a book with a long dead author, or paying a willing confederate to write your thesis for you, is still plagiarism.
      • LadyCailin 14d ago
        In academic settings, it’s also plagiarism to copy your own previous work. Given that, I’m not sure academia gets to take the high ground on what constitutes misconduct or not wrt to plagiarism, at least in the edge cases.
        • cycomanic 14d ago
          It's often denoted plagiarism or self plagiarism as a short cut. While it's probably better denoted duplicate publication (or similar) it still constitutes a similar academic misconduct, because you're pretending something is novel without it being novel As a side note quite often it can actually be literal plagiarism as well, many journals require you to assign copyright, so using that work without attribution is plagiarism.
• phyzome 14d ago
  No need to hedge. It very simply is plagiarism.