Lesson 345 of 2116
Citation Hygiene: Never Ship A Fake Reference
The single most damaging AI-research failure mode is the fabricated citation. Build a workflow that makes this mathematically impossible.
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1Why LLMs fabricate references so well
- 2fabricated citation
- 3DOI
- 4verification
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
Why LLMs fabricate references so well
Citations follow a predictable grammar: author, year, title, venue, page range. LLMs learned this grammar without learning the underlying papers. They can produce citations that would be published if they existed — and they feel real because they sound real. A fabricated citation that survives to publication can end a career.
The verification loop
- 1No citation enters your draft without a DOI or stable URL
- 2Open the source, confirm the author list and year match
- 3Read the abstract and verify the quoted claim actually appears
- 4Check that page numbers exist
- 5Record the access date for anything web-based
Tooling that helps
- Zotero with the browser connector — automatically captures DOIs and PDFs
- Semantic Scholar API — resolves titles to verified records
- CrossRef — DOI lookups, author disambiguation
- A 'citations to verify' column in your draft that blocks shipping until cleared
Key terms in this lesson
The big idea: verify every reference, no exceptions. The minute you make an exception, you will be the cautionary tale.
End-of-lesson quiz
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