Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature (nature.com) AI

Nature reports that large language models are increasingly generating fabricated or untraceable “hallucinated” references that have appeared in thousands of 2025 papers. An analysis of more than 4,000 publications found that many had invalid citations, and manual checks confirmed that 65 of the most suspicious papers contained at least one reference that could not be verified. The article also describes publisher screening efforts and the difficulty of deciding how to handle problems once such citations make it into the published record.