alt Hacker News> Your being set behind is less important than the fact that your publishing is setting everyone else behind
One hallucinated citation does not in any way imply anyone is being left behind. All it means nobody is checked that particular line of the manuscript after it was written. The rest of the paper could still be solid and treated accordingly. If you find evidence of the contrary, of course treat it accordingly, but this is so obviously not that.
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No. It's fraud.
You clearly misunderstand. You cite a work in your paper because you have read that work, and build upon it or want to refer to it to back up a specific claim. Generating references is fraud period, because you are implying that you have read a work when in fact you just asked an AI "please insert some reference-shaped text here" to make it look like a proper paper. It is sadly not a necessary, but certainly a VERY sufficient, reason to conclude a paper is fraudulent.
> One hallucinated citation does not in any way imply anyone is being left behind.
The parent said “setting” others behind, which refers to lost time.
Being “left” behind implies a degraded trajectory, which is defined not by time lost, but by the final destination.
Different but related things (e.g. lost time can indeed affect your final destination, for instance, after growing old correcting a scourge of hallucinated citations - which should have been table stakes all along).