MIT-retracted AI paper becomes a 'zombie citation' with 110 citations and counting

RexDouglass · x · 2026-09-06

In May 2025, MIT publicly disowned Aidan Toner-Rodgers' viral AI paper over fabricated data, and arXiv retracted it. Yet the paper has since accumulated 110 citations — 31 in 2026 alone — including venues under Nature, Cell, and Elsevier. The post coins the term 'zombie citation': neither authors nor reviewers check what they cite, so retracted papers keep flowing into the scholarly record.

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