[breakwaterlabs]

A system that generates plausible, seemingly authoritative information, but often makes hard to detect errors ranging from minor to outright lies is dangeorous. This goes double when the information is either difficult or impossible to verify.

This shouldn't be surprising, since the most effective and dangerous liars tell the truth most of the time.

[JohnFen]

> but often makes hard to detect errors ranging from minor to outright lies is dangeorous.

Oh, I agree. However, the peer-review system does mitigate this problem to a useful degree. Without such a system, it would be impossible to have any degree of trust in any paper at all.

> What we're really finding out is that journals are often little better than LLMs as information sources.

It depends on the journal. There are absolutely crap ones out there that need to be ignored. But there are also good ones out there that have earned their reputation. Even there, BS can get through of course -- but to say that such journals are mostly unreliable is seriously overstating the issue.

[smeej]

I've yet to see studies saying this isn't pervasive across journals. The vast majority are apparently affected.

The idea of peer-reviewed journals is great. The reality is a circle jerk.

[xboxnolifes]

Reading un-replicated papers as authoritative accounts is definitely a problem. Solution: don't do that.

[breakwaterlabs]

What percentage of papers in your average, reputable journal have been replicated?

And how can one easily determine, while looking at a particular paper, whether it has been replicated? And whether those doing the replication have any undisclosed ties to the original?

At an epistemological level, the idea of a knowledge source like a journal where the information is only deemed reliable if personally verified seems problematic. Why even have it if all of its uncountable claims are indistinguishable from very clever lies, and attempts to quantify the extent of those lies indicate that they are pervasive?