Study traces AI statistics: only 40% lead to a matching original study
What happened
On October 29, Hacker News' front page carried Trakkr Research's study tracing "zombie statistics," asking where the numbers cited in AI answers come from. The study put 200 questions requiring numeric answers to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews, then traced a sample of 1,285 statistics. Only 40% of the sampled statistics could be traced to an original study with matching content. The result covers this sample and measures whether a matching original study can be found, not all AI statistics citations.
Written by AI from the coverage · updated 21 minutes ago
Coverage
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- Hacker News front pageZombie stats: Where the numbers AI quotes come from
Trakkr Research 向 ChatGPT、Perplexity、Gemini、Claude 和 Google AI Overviews 提出 200 个需要数字回答的问题，追溯抽样的 1,285 条统计数字，仅 40% 找到内容一致的原始研究。
Heat over time
Not enough continuous observations to draw a trend yet.