Description: "Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced," published by Springer Nature in April 2025, reportedly contained numerous purportedly nonexistent or materially incorrect academic citations. Independent checks allegedly found that many referenced works did not exist or were misattributed, with multiple named researchers reportedly confirming they did not author the cited material. The pattern of errors has been described as consistent with known LLM citation hallucinations.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown large language model developers and Unknown generative AI developers developed an AI system deployed by Springer Nature and Govindakumar Madhavan, which harmed students , Readers of academic and technical books , Epistemic integrity and Academic researchers.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown large language models and Unknown generative AI systems
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1308
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-04-18
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up?
If not, you might want to pass on purchasing Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced, published by Springer Nature in Apr…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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