AI-hallucinated citations are creeping into papers that shape clinical guidelines, researchers warn

An audit of 2.5 million biomedical papers by Columbia University revealed a more than twelvefold increase in fabricated references since 2023. Researchers suspect this surge is linked to the use of language models, as the fake references align with the paper's topic and adhere to correct formatting, making them nearly undetectable. Alarmingly, 98% of the affected papers have received no response from their publishers, raising concerns about the potential impact of these citations on clinical guidelines.