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Peer-reviewed

Explosion of formulaic research articles, including inappropriate study designs and false discoveries, based on the NHANES US national health database

Tulsi Suchak, Anietie E Aliu, C. V. Harrison, Reyer Zwiggelaar, Nophar Geifman, Matt Spick

PLoS Biology · 2025

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Summary

With the growth of artificial intelligence (AI)-ready datasets such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), new opportunities for data-driven research are being created, but also generating risks of data exploitation by paper mills. In this work, we focus on two areas of potential concern for AI-supported research efforts. First, we describe the production of large numbers of formulaic single-factor analyses, relating single predictors to specific health conditions, where multifactorial approaches would be more appropriate. Employing AI-supported single-factor approaches removes context from research, fails to capture interactions, avoids false discovery correction, and is an approach that can easily be adopted by paper mills. Second, we identify risks of selectiv

Source type
Peer-reviewed study
DOI
10.1371/journal.pbio.3003152
Catalogue ID
SNmoj7npag-y409s1
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