I Used AI to Fake a Scientific Paper. Here's What Happened

Journalist Benjamin Skuse used free LLMs to generate a plausible fake paper on optical solitons, which IEEE Access's integrity checkers flagged for 12 to 24 hallucinated references, and later submitted a paper produced by the automated research system FARS, which was rejected over heavy preprint reliance and flawed figures. The piece reports that an estimated 57 percent of published academic articles showed detectable LLM influence by 2025, and explores how automated research systems are straining peer review and blurring the line between legitimate science and AI fabrication.