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

> Our understanding is that only authors of papers appearing on arXiv can submit withdrawal requests. We have directed the author to submit such a request, but to date, the author has not done so.

Between this and the subtle reference to “former second-year PhD student” it makes sense that they’d have to make a public statement.

They do a good job of toeing the required line of privacy while also giving enough information to see what’s going on.

I wonder if the author thought they could leave the paper up and ride it into a new position while telling a story about voluntarily choosing to leave MIT. They probably didn’t expect MIT to make a public statement about the paper and turn it into a far bigger news story than it would have been if the author quietly retracted it.

Seeing as how the author has signed in with an account whose email address is username@mit.edu, MIT could just take over the account.

Edit: this comment was only partially serious, not meant as legal advice to MIT.

That's not how it works in the real world. That would be a fraudulent request and I suspect they'd invite legal trouble by impersonating someone else to access a computer system.

Furthermore, if the author could demonstrate to arXiv that the request was fraudulent, the paper would be reinstated. The narrative would also switch to people being angry at MIT for impersonating a student to do something.

I've done it for people who used my email to sign up for Facebook and Instagram. Presumably now they have a more rigorous verification flow but they used to let people use any email without checking. I can't have a potential criminal using a social account connected to me, so password reset and disable the account is the only rational solution. Obviously this is slightly more problematic for an institution.