Two reviewers flagged fake authors in papers—both were accepted as orals anyway

I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

Caleb Robinson and Isaac Corley reviewed 22 ML conference submissions this summer. Fifteen—68%—contained fabricated citations, hallucinated author names, or obvious LLM-generated text. Two papers Isaac rejected for fake authors were accepted as orals anyway, on the condition that the references be fixed. They released a bib-audit tool and cited numbers: an estimated 146,900 hallucinated citations on arXiv and similar platforms in 2025, with 85.3% surviving into published versions; 21% of ICLR 2026 reviews were fully AI-generated. Their take: peer review is unpaid labor, and if authors won't even check their own references, there's no reason for reviewers to spend nights and weekends on it.

Why it matters: Two reviewers flagged 68% of 22 submissions as having fake citations or AI slop, and rejected papers still got accepted as orals. Concrete numbers, a released tool, and strong peer resonance hit all three HKR axes. Not scored higher because this is more an industry rant + tool...