Springer Nature Book on Machine Learning is Full of Made-Up Citations

Springer Nature published a $169 machine learning textbook in April containing citations that appear to be largely fabricated, according to an investigation by Retraction Watch. The site checked 18 of the 46 citations in 'Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced' by Govindakumar Madhavan and found two-thirds either did not exist or contained substantial errors.

Three researchers contacted by Retraction Watch confirmed their supposedly authored works were fake or incorrectly cited. Yehuda Dar of Ben-Gurion University said a paper cited as appearing in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine was actually an unpublished arXiv preprint. Aaron Courville of Universite de Montreal confirmed he was cited for sections of his 'Deep Learning' book that 'doesn't seem to exist.'

The pattern of nonexistent citations matches known hallmarks of large language model-generated text. Madhavan did not answer whether he used AI to generate the book's content. The book contains no AI disclosure despite Springer Nature policies requiring authors to declare AI use beyond basic copy editing.

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