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'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers

(asia.nikkei.com)
177 points ohjeez | 10 comments | 05 Jul 25 15:15 UTC | HN request time: 1.012s | source | bottom
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dynm ◴[05 Jul 25 16:09 UTC] No.44473682[source]▶
Just to be clear, these are hidden prompts put in papers by authors meant to be triggered only if a reviewer (unethically) uses AI to generate their review. I guess this is wrong, but I find it hard not to have some sympathy for the authors. Mostly, it seems like an indictment of the whole peer-review system.
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SoftTalker ◴[05 Jul 25 16:55 UTC] No.44473971[source]▶
Back in high school a few kids would be tempted to insert a sentence such as "I bet you don't actually read all these papers" into an essay to see if the teacher caught it. I never tried it but the rumors were that some kids had got away with it. I just used it to worry less that my work was rushed and not very good, I told myself "the teacher will probably just be skimming this anyway; they don't have time to read all these papers in detail."
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1. lelandfe ◴[05 Jul 25 17:10 UTC] No.44474086[source]▶
Aerosmith (e: Van Halen) banned brown M&Ms from their dressing room for shows and wouldn’t play if they were present. It was a sign that the venue hadn’t read the rider thoroughly and thus possibly an unsafe one (what else had they missed?)
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2. wrp ◴[05 Jul 25 17:24 UTC] No.44474165[source]▶
Van Halen. I think there are multiple videos of David Lee Roth telling the story. Entertaining in the details.
3. theyinwhy ◴[05 Jul 25 17:26 UTC] No.44474176[source]▶
Van Halen ;)
4. seadan83 ◴[05 Jul 25 17:26 UTC] No.44474178[source]▶
Was it actually Van Halen?

> As lead singer David Lee Roth explained in a 2012 interview, the bowl of M&Ms was an indicator of whether the concert promoter had actually read the band's complicated contract. [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contrac...

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5. dgfitz ◴[05 Jul 25 17:31 UTC] No.44474212[source]▶
To add to this, sometimes people would approach Van and ask about the brown M&Ms thing as soon as they received the contract. He would respond that the color wasn’t important, and he was glad they read the contract.
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6. SoftTalker ◴[05 Jul 25 17:41 UTC] No.44474281[source]▶
Who is "Van" ?
7. LambdaComplex ◴[05 Jul 25 17:41 UTC] No.44474284[source]▶
Eddie, you mean? Or Alex. They're Dutch; "Van" is the first part of their surname "Van Halen."

(As opposed to "Van Morrison;" his middle name was Ivan and he actually went by Van)

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8. acheron ◴[05 Jul 25 17:50 UTC] No.44474344{3}[source]▶
Huh, I didn’t know “Van” Morrison was short for Ivan.

Also found out recently “Gram” Parsons was short for Ingram.

9. SoftTalker ◴[05 Jul 25 17:50 UTC] No.44474345[source]▶
I wonder if they had to change that as the word leaked out. I can just see the promoter pointing out the bowl of M&Ms and then Roth saying "great, thank you, but the contract didn't say anything about M&Ms, now where is the bowl of tangerenes we asked for?"
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10. nerdsniper ◴[05 Jul 25 18:52 UTC] No.44474711{3}[source]▶
By that point they may have had a good idea of which venues and crew they could trust and focus energy on those that hadn’t made the whitelist.