On Rats with Oversized Genitalia and Other Submissions

By now you’ve probably seen or heard of the review published in another journal that appears to be completely generated by artificial intelligence. This masterpiece had figures that were hallucinatory with text that was barely recognizable as English. Fig. 2 was a diagram of the JAK-STAT pathway that bore no resemblance to any current models and was insulting to all those who have worked on the pathway. But Fig. 1 is probably the image that caught your eye. It showed a rat, standing upright with a partially dissected set of testicles and penis. Striking enough, for sure, but even more so because the testicles and penis were larger than the rat itself. Yes, you’ve made me say it outright: The rat had a giant penis. Not oversized. Not out of proportion. Huge. Giant. Monstrous. See for yourself at Elizabeth Bik’s Science Integrity blog (https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2024/02/15/the-rat-with-the-big-balls-and-enormous-penis-how-frontiers-published-a-paper-with-botched-ai-generated-images/). Just be warned.

The text, particularly on the figures, was hilarious and riddled with typos and made-up words such as “retat” and “dck.” There was “dissilced,” which honestly sounds painful, and “testtomcels,” which don’t even seem to arise in one of the four testicles, according to the diagram. The authors noted the figures were produced with artificial intelligence but were obviously not checked for accuracy before inclusion. It clearly took some big dck energy to publish this.

So, how did it get published? Apparently, one of the two reviewers identified some problems with the figures, but this was not corrected before publication. After numerous concerns were raised, the paper was retracted within 48 h. There was such a furor over how this could be published that, when it was retracted, no one seemed to find the obvious humor in the image of a rat with a giant penis having the word “RETRACTED” stamped over the top. For a humorist, that alone was worth the price of admission.

It wasn’t just the images. The text, at least as far as I read, was equally laughable. The abstract really didn’t say anything and followed all the patterns that I identified in my previous editorial titled, “I haven’t been replaced by ChatGPT” (1). There are vaguely defined terms, restating the same thing repeatedly in different phrasings, and platitudes about the importance of the perspective. That it wasn’t identified immediately as a problem says something concerning about the literacy of the review process as well. This article did have some purpose, though. It brought Science Twitter alive again, and it gave me the opportunity to use the phrase “giant penis” many more times than I thought possible in an ImmunoHorizons editorial.

One of my mentors, and I may be paraphrasing here a bit, said, “Look, the bottom line is that when you publish something, you want it to be right.” To me, that seems incredibly obvious but maybe not to all. Our hypotheses are not always right, but when the story comes together for publication, you want the story to stand up to time. You want it to be cited and to provide a solid foundation for you or someone else to take the next step.

And that’s where AAI comes in. There’s a reason The JI has the longest citation half-life: because the review is rigorous, the reviewers are experts, and the editors are dedicated. The Impact Factor doesn’t mean a “retat’s” ass if you can’t trust the work. And anyone who’s reviewed for (or been reviewed by) IH or The JI knows the rigor used to examine gating strategies, replicates, and statistical tests that makes you feel like you’ve been dissilced. But that’s an advantage of the process, because both the authors and the readers know that the work has passed real peer review. I’ve been on both sides of the review process, and, as Editor-In-Chief of IH, I can assure you that we would never allow a rat with a giant penis on our pages. Unless it was rigorously reviewed and had some sort of immunological phenotype. And even then, I’d be concerned because, as you know, size isn’t everything.