Publisher Removes 200 papers University of Chicago Statistician Wrote in Under 1 Year

Scholars say situation adds to larger concerns about AI usage producing high volume, low quality articles

Scholars are raising questions about AI usage and academic quality after University of Chicago statistician Nicholas Polson wrote more than 200 academic papers this year using AI. 

“The question needs to be: do these add anything of value and should we rely on them or not?” Ivan Oransky told The College Fix in a recent interview. Oransky is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks academic retractions, and a New York University journalism professor.

A tenured professor, Polson’s papers primarily focus on advanced math and statistics such as statistical parameterization and financial markets. Some of his research highlighted on the University of Chicago’s website includes measuring the “energy cost” of using AI and analyzing the odds of cheating. 

Recently, however, concerns about the large number of articles Polson was producing prompted SSRN, a pre-print server for academic papers, to retract 253 papers that he wrote or co-wrote within the past year, The Washington Post reported.