Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can generate and revise text with human-level performance. These models come with clear limitations, can produce inaccurate information, and reinforce existing biases. Yet, many scientists use them for their scholarly writing. But how widespread is such LLM usage in the academic literature? To answer this question for the field of biomedical research, we present an unbiased, large-scale approach: We study vocabulary changes in more than 15 million biomedical abstracts from 2010 to 2024 indexed by PubMed and show how the appearance of LLMs led to an abrupt increase in the frequency of certain style words. This excess word analysis suggests that at least 13.5% of 2024 abstracts were processed with LLMs. This lower bound differed across disciplines, countries, and journals, reaching 40% for some subcorpora. We show that LLMs have had an unprecedented impact on scientific writing in biomedical research, surpassing the effect of major world events such as the COVID pandemic.
Very interesting paper, and grade A irony to begin the title with “delving” while finding that “delve” is one of the top excess words/markers of LLM writing.
Moreover, the authors highlight a few excerpts that “illustrate the LLM-style flowery language” including
By meticulously delving into the intricate web connecting […] and […], this comprehensive chapter takes a deep dive into their involvement as significant risk factors for […].
…and then they clearly intentionally conclude the discussion section thus
We hope that future work will meticulously delve into tracking LLM usage more accurately and assess which policy changes are crucial to tackle the intricate challenges posed by the rise of LLMs in scientific publishing.
Great work.
tbh I don’t see anything wrong with using AI just to write the abstract, assuming the author redacts it afterwards. It becomes much more problematic if AI is used in the middle section of the paper, where it is crucial to present information as accurately as possible.
Analysis of over 15M+ bodies of water finds that water is wet.
