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.

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...

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...