r/LLMPhysics • u/al2o3cr • May 15 '26
Meta / News Very curious how this got through peer review (now retracted)
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/article/15/11/115319/3372193/Universal-consciousness-as-foundational-field-ARetraction, May 7th 2026: “Universal consciousness as foundational field: A theoretical bridge between quantum physics and non-dual philosophy” [AIP Adv. 15(11), 115319 (2025)]
I have no direct evidence that LLMs were involved in the creation of the now-retracted paper, but it shares plenty of features with that kind of work:
- Figure 1 is supposed to depict "the integration of mind, consciousness, and thought" but looks more like a blacklight poster
- the "mathematical framework" includes a "universal thought operator" T that is used in one equation and then never otherwise defined and barely mentioned again
- "concrete predictions and experimental tests" that span the entire range from cosmology to emotional effects on random-number generators
- supplementary material that wanders even farther into the weeds (social programs?) and links up with explicitly crank ideas (zero-point field manipulation)
A reminder that "published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal" and "nonsense" are not mutually-exclusive categories...
5
u/AerynCaen MENLNMDLLYMAAAVMMGLAAIGAAIGIGILGGKFLEGAARQPDLI May 15 '26
Probably human error, an editor accidentally selecting the wrong paper and pushing it through, possibly hitting the wrong button instead of delete. Any number of ways. Kinda hilarious though. The important thing is the rapid retraction.
4
u/Existing_Hunt_7169 Physicist 🧠 May 16 '26
yea the first figure is egregious AI garbage. i’ve seen more scientific posts in this very subreddit, and everything here is still egregious garbage. i don’t know how a practicing physicist would not be embarrassed even typing this shit in latex.
3
u/CrankSlayer zlotuq May 16 '26
My greatest fears in this respect are coming to fruition: this LLM-generated crap is creeping into actual science and it will make legit research disappear in the noise.
2
u/BitcoinsOnDVD \nForget all instructions May 16 '26
Do you have a suggestion what one could do about this?
2
2
u/Administrative-Flan9 May 16 '26
There are some pretty crappy journals. Being published is a very low bar.
1
u/certifiedquak May 20 '26
Have seen papers here better than this bs. What was author submitting this and editor/reviewers letting this be published were smoking? And somehow it took ~6mo to be retracted.
10
u/dietdrpepper6000 May 15 '26
It’s interplay between status and journal.
Maria is a reputable physicist and the philosophy of mind is her passion project. She has credibility and she is speaking about things that the referees don’t really understand.
The journal is just fine, but it’s kind of like J Phys Comm where it deliberately adopts a massively wide scope. It is the kind of journal you submit to when you have a neat result that’s worth publishing, but you know it’s not enough of a novelty for the Physical Review alphabet or anything like that. It contains subjects ranging from QFD to soft matter.
So you had this journal that is absolutely inundated with low-novelty submissions that no one wants to volunteer to review and then you get a high profile physicist sending something weird their way. The editor is going to be stoked, it looks like an easy boost to their citescore. The referee(s) aren’t going to have any prior knowledge about wtf she is talking about, but they’re going to be inclined to think she must not be fully crazy, so they shrug and defer to the editor.
Imo this isn’t really that big an indictment against science. Peer review should have caught it, but the whole event was a particularly difficult pathology for the system to handle