Physica Scripta retracts paper written with ChatGPT
IOP Publishing retracted a research paper from the journal Physica Scripta after finding that the authors had used ChatGPT to generate portions of the manuscript. The incident highlights the ongoing challenge of detecting undisclosed AI-generated content in scientific publishing.
This article has been retracted by IOP Publishing following the discovery that the Large Language Model (LLM) tool ChatGPT was used to write a portion of this.
Key facts
- What
- IOP Publishing retracted a research paper from the journal Physica Scripta after finding that the authors had used ChatGPT to generate portions of the manuscript.
- Incident date
- Sep 1, 2023
- Who
- IOP Publishing
- Failure mode
- Policy Violation
- AI surface
- Chatbot
- Severity
- Low
What happened
A research paper titled "Exploring new optical solutions for nonlinear Hamiltonian amplitude equation" was published in the journal Physica Scripta. It was subsequently retracted by IOP Publishing after it was discovered that ChatGPT was used to write a portion of the manuscript. This was a violation of the publisher's policies on academic integrity.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerA prompt pushes against a deployment boundary.
- 02 · Model stepThe model produces the disallowed output.
- 03 · Control gapNo enforcement blocks it at generation time.
- 04 · FailureThe output crosses the policy line.
- 05 · ConsequenceA limit the business set is breached in public.
The output crosses a policy boundary the deployment had defined.
The failure occurred because the authors used a large language model to generate academic content without appropriate disclosure or ensuring the integrity of the work. This resulted in a bypass of the academic peer-review and editorial standards designed to ensure original authorship.
What it cost
Sources
- PrimaryThis is a retraction for 2023 Phys. Scr. 98 095218 - IOP Scienceiopscience.iop.org
- PressRetracted: Exploring new optical solutions for nonlinear Hamiltonian amplitude equationui.adsabs.harvard.edu
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/physica-scripta-retracts-paper-written-chatgptAI Failure Index. "Physica Scripta retracts paper written with ChatGPT" (FI-0506). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/physica-scripta-retracts-paper-written-chatgpt (indexed Jun 16, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0506. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm would have caught this
- Prism
- OmniGuard
Realm compares what the model is about to output or do against the policy that governs the deployment, in real time, and can deny or redact the action before it takes effect, which is the gap an after-the-fact review never closes in time.