I don’t think I can adequately stress how bad this is for a publisher as big as Springer to screw up this badly. A new textbook of theirs had extensive hallucinated sources.
Based on a tip from a reader, we checked 18 of the 46 citations in the book. Two-thirds of them either did not exist or had substantial errors. And three researchers cited in the book confirmed the works they supposedly authored were fake or the citation contained substantial errors.
And then there’s this:
The 257-page book includes a section on ChatGPT that states: “the technology raises important ethical questions about the use and misuse of AI-generated text.”
It costs $169, in case you’re wondering.
Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations | RetractionWatch