"Is 200 Papers in 9 Months Possible?"... U.S. Professor's Use of AI Shocks Academia

The Washington Post (WP) has reported that the U.S. academic community is in shock after it was revealed that a university professor in the United States has written over 200 papers in about nine months this year.

Due to this unprecedented rate of paper production, the academic community suspects that he inflated his research performance using artificial intelligence (AI).

SSRN, a preprint server for academic papers, recently announced that due to a surge in paper uploads over the past month by Nicholas Polson, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, it has removed 257 of Polson's papers and frozen the accounts used to upload them.

SSRN stated that while it requires scholars to disclose when they use AI in their papers, Polson's papers did not disclose whether AI was used.

However, SSRN noted that the disclosure of AI use is not the most critical issue, adding, "What is more important is the unusual pattern of paper submissions."

WP explained that while most of the papers published by Polson, who researches statistics and mathematics, focus on his field of expertise, there were also many topics outside of it.

Polson has further heightened academic suspicion by independently and jointly publishing 14 books this year in addition to his papers.

Auyon Siddiq, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and one of the first scholars to notice his surge in papers, pointed out, "It is not just the volume, but also the diversity of topics and the differences from previous papers that matter."

Andrew Gelman, a statistician at Columbia University, mentioned that while he has not read all of Polson's papers, after reading one of them, "You could tell that a chatbot wrote parts of the paper."

Gelman expressed puzzlement, saying, "He has tenure," and noting that while people talk a lot about AI misconduct, it is strange why he is churning out papers like this when he has little to gain by using AI.

As criticisms mounted, Polson refuted the academic community's criticisms in an email to WP, calling them "jealousy and a desire to hijack my writing process and methods."

WP reported that Polson admitted to using AI in his research process, but did not respond to why he failed to disclose the use of AI in writing the papers.

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