AI-assisted scientific writing assignments risk fabricated references and altered chemical meaning¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2029: tool and model accuracy changes quickly

Subclaims¶

q2 i? In a ChatGPT-assisted biochemistry writing assignment, many model-supplied references were nonexistent or unusable, making explicit verification pedagogically necessary. → Vega-Baudrit JR and Rivera Álvarez A 2026

Evidence¶

Vega-Baudrit JR and Rivera Álvarez A 2026¶

Vega-Baudrit JR and Rivera Álvarez A (2026) Generative artificial intelligence in university chemistry education: a critical review using Johnstone’s chemistry triplet and Biggs’ 3P model. Front. Educ. 11:1918707. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1918707

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports this implementation finding, citing Reddy et al. (2024), and notes the failure "is pedagogically useful only when verification is explicit and assessed". No effect size is printed.

"In the biochemistry assignment described by Reddy et al. (2024), many model-supplied references were nonexistent or unusable."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Writing Skills — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• GenAI chemistry outputs can be fluent and locally persuasive while chemically invalid across representations — related
• Students report negative experiences with ChatGPT including inaccurate outputs, lack of emotional connection, and risk of overreliance, which constrain competence — related
• Gen-AI hallucinates sources and values and produces convincing but incorrect explanations, risking student misinformation — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Poorly grounded GenAI self-study risks fabricated content and inferior learning relative to curated resources — related
• The most frequently cited ethical concerns about GenAI in research were hallucinated facts, fabricated references, and misleading content — related
• AI-generated ethics exercise materials carried external citations that did not survive checking, ranging from misattributed to apparently fabricated — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• ChatGPT fabricates references: the authors caught it inventing a non-existent 'Ribeiro and Vala, 2020' article with full bibliographic details — related
• Review-attributed evidence: fabricated model-generated references clustered in disciplinary journals in a student verification exercise — related
• Retrieval-augmented generation reduces but does not eliminate hallucinations in AI-assisted verification — related
• Large language models can produce fluent but factually inaccurate or fabricated outputs (AI hallucination), posing risks for uncritical users in science education — a broader claim this one bears on