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Invented citations

Plausible references that do not exist, or real papers credited with results they never contain.
Author
Affiliation

Francesco De Gasperin

INAF

Published

October 31, 2026

What happens

Asked for references, a model can return citations with real-looking authors, journals and years that do not exist. A subtler version: the paper exists, but does not contain the result attributed to it.

How to catch it

  • Resolve every reference in ADS or by DOI before using it.
  • For each citation, find the sentence in the paper that supports the claim.

How to prevent it

Give the model the papers (or their abstracts) and require it to cite only from that set, as in Literature search with NASA ADS. Then check automatically that every cited identifier is in the set.

Cases

To be added: dated examples with the model and the prompt used.

How to cite

BibTeX:
@online{de_gasperin2026,
  author = {De Gasperin, Francesco},
  title = {Invented Citations},
  date = {2026-10-31},
  url = {https://astronomicalintelligence.org/failures/invented-citations.html},
  langid = {en}
}
Cite this page as:
De Gasperin, Francesco. 2026. “Invented Citations.” Astronomical Intelligence, October 31. https://astronomicalintelligence.org/failures/invented-citations.html.