MIT asks arXiv to withdraw preprint of paper on AI and scientific discovery

I don't think arXiv should take it down even if it is fraud. ArXiv is more about being a permanent store than a quality judge.

store of what? fake scientific articles or genuine preprints? if the latter clean this crap up

>Earlier this year, the COD conducted a confidential internal review based upon allegations it received regarding certain aspects of this paper. While student privacy laws and MIT policy prohibit the disclosure of the outcome of this review, we are writing to inform you that MIT has no confidence in the provenance, reliability or validity of the data and has no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper. Based upon this finding, we also believe that the inclusion of this paper in arXiv may violate arXiv’s Code of Conduct.

It sounds like "we don't like it and won't tell you why, we're hiding behind MIT policy and vague notions of privacy".

MIT should just demonstrate in a paper what the shortcomings are and print it, adding it to the citation tree of the original.

Looking very briefly at the paper and speculating wildly, I could imagine that the company who were subject of it - or their staff - might not appreciate it and have put pressure on MIT??

Solid amount of Streisand Effect going on here -- lots of attention has been bought to the paper (and that is everything after all!).

Judging quality/fraud is the role of a journal/conference, not arXiv. If a paper gets rejected does it come off arXiv? No. If a paper is never submitted does it come off? No. If a paper is retracted, does it come off? No. ArXiv should avoid making as many subjective determinations as possible.

> Looking very briefly at the paper and speculating wildly, I could imagine that the company who were subject of it - or their staff - might not appreciate it and have put pressure on MIT??

The apparent issue is that the data appears to have been entirely fabricated and is a lie. The author appears to simply be a fraud

I agree with this, it's actually a good reminder not to trust a preprint server. Arxiv already has an inappropriate air of validity, moderation will only make it worse.

(Incidentally, I don't think misplaced trust in preprints is much of an academic issue, people that are experts in their field can easily judge quality for themselves. It's laypeople taking them at face value that's the problem.)

> It sounds like "we don't like it and won't tell you why, we're hiding behind MIT policy and vague notions of privacy".

FERPA is federal law. It is quite likely that MIT is legally bound to not release some pieces of evidence which are crucial in this case (hypothetically, for example: that the student's educational record is inconsistent with claims made in the paper).

Actually arXiv is moderated and if policies are violated they may even withdraw* a paper themselves, if it wasn't declined to be published in first place. Regarding policies, it's mentioned that a "submission may be declined if the moderators determine it lacks originality, novelty, significance, and/or contains falsified, plagiarized content or serious misrepresentations of data, affiliation, or content."

*Note that this creates a new version lacking any download which also becomes the default but any previous ones are still available.

Suppose that arXiv withdraws it and says the reason is fraud. What if it turns out to not be fraud? Either way, what if the author sues for libel? Why should arXiv spend resources evaluating papers after they've already been published on the arXiv? It's just inviting all the issues stackoverflow and the youtube copyright strike system have.

Okay then don’t say it’s fraud, say it’s credibly alleged to be fraud.