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

MIT is hiding its own culpability by throwing the Student under the proverbial bus. Acemoglu and Autor who are notorious attention seekers and very media savvy and wealthy profs had vouched for him. There is no way a 2nd year PhD students could have pulled this off on his own without a trace of his whereabouts and contacts in the industry.

A cursory review of the first paragraph of the abstract of his single author paper should've set off alarms:

"AI-assisted researchers discover 44% more materials, resulting in a 39% increase in patent filings and a 17% rise in downstream product innovation".

Anyone with rudimentary familiarity with industrial materials science research would have suspected those double digit numbers - even single digit improvements are extremely rare.

This is a recording of a seminar on this paper the author gave via zoom:

https://cassyni.com/events/MiPYGu3qzKP5MQFWNUn9Tb

In retrospect, there seems to be a tell that when he's lying he won't look at the screen/camera: his eyes go up, left, right, anywhere but forward. What I find scary is that this practice of extemporaneous fabrication may be a well-ingrained habit at this point that isn't limited to the scientific realm of the author's life.

Apparently, he also attempted to create a fake website to try to cover his tracks, registering the domain on Jan 12 2025, potentially to try to show that Corning was the company he worked with. This drew a WIPO complaint whereby Corning compelled transfer of the domain name:

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/pdf/2025/d2025...

<corningresearch.com>

Detailed (meta)science-based reporting here from another person who guessed Corning: https://thebsdetector.substack.com/p/ai-materials-and-fraud-...

>It looks eerily similar to the distribution in this [pharma] preprint. This distribution might make sense for drugs, but makes very little intuitive sense for a broad range of materials, with the figure of merit derived directly from the atomic positions in the crystal structure. This is the kind of mistake that someone with no domain expertise in materials science might make.

> his eyes go up, left, right, anywhere but forward

In this case perhaps that's a tell, but there are a lot of people who don't like looking people in the eyes for other reasons, too, just so you're aware.

That's not really science though. Body language in general, and eye placement specifically is my most hated pseudoscience.

I struggle to make and maintain eye contact, because bad childhood trauma. Eye contact was perceived as aggression and disrespect by the man who lived in my house, and would lead to beatings. There are a lot of us that struggle with that, for many different reasons.

Anyone who is a practiced liar will be able to look you dead in the eyes while they do it.

At a minimum, MIT must disclose publicly, if and how, its faculty PI and admins complied with the review and approval requirements for human research subjects and NSF grant:

"This work was supported by the George and Obie Shultz Fund and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant no 2141064. IRB approval for the survey was granted by MIT's Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects under ID E-5842" https://couhes.mit.edu/policies-procedures/review-and-approv...

I get the sense that no actual grant, review, or approval took place here. As someone else pointed out, the timeline doesn't add up - the review would have had to take place before the author entered the PhD program.

Here is the original coverage by wsj, note the shody reporting and absence of independent review or opinion by anyone not affiliated by MIT.

“It’s fantastic,” said Acemoglu. “I was floored,” said Autor.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/will-ai-help-hurt-workers-income...

Clearly, Lahart is a journalistic tool and charlatan, so he's @ the right place:

  "Justin Lahart is an economics reporter based in New York. Previously, Justin 
   was a Heard on the Street columnist and wrote the Ahead of the Tape column."