As a hospital librarian, Jessica Waite is typically successful at tracking down elusive articles for clinicians at Royal Hallamshire Hospital in England. Waite searched for the full list of references and discovered that 12 of the 14 didn’t exist. Such cases frequently result from hallucinations generated by large language models such as ChatGPT. The references were from an article exploring mental health integration after bowel diversion surgery published in Digestive Diseases and Sciences (DDS), a Springer Nature title.

Author Marie Atallah claims the references were submitted in error, an oversight affected by a brain injury. She provided with two more reference lists, the first with more nonexistent sources and a final copy with real references. 

Waite contacted Springer Nature about her concerns, and the publisher said it would investigate the matter, according to an email. Michael Stacey, head of communications for Springer Nature journals, confirmed the publisher was alerted to concerns about the paper’s references earlier this year.

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2026/03/06/librarian-finds-preposterous-number-of-fake-references-in-paper-from-springer-nature-journal/

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