Not sure what is up with the Discover * series by Springer, but they have major problems. veruscite.com/hallucinatio... None of these editors have responded to my emails about this problem FYI.
Andy Wheeler
@crimede-coder.bsky.social
Data scientist, with background in criminal justice. Consulting website at https://crimede-coder.com/ Personal blog at https://andrewpwheeler.com/
I typically review all of the hallucinations in articles I post for "Hallucination of the day". But this article has over 50, and I gave up after the first 10. veruscite.com/share/20GoGI... This is obviously a dereliction of any duty to ensure quality via a peer reviewed journal editorial process.
Various updates on my personal blog -- the CCJ homicide decline report, new crime de-coder store updates (see post for several coupons), VerusCite is now $1, and several new AI papers. andrewpwheeler.com/2026/10/08/v... Buy a book! (Learn python and LLM APIs)
VerusCite is now $1, Crime De-Coder Store updates, CCJ Homicide Report, and some more AI papers
For several minor updates across my different projects. One, I have updated my Crime De-Coder store where I sell my books and software. Before, it was a WooCommerce site, which worked ok (pure GUI …
andrewpwheeler.com
Council on CJ released their expert panel on the causes of the US homicide decline. I was one of the participants. counciloncj.org/whats-drivin... Not much agreement on what caused the decline, but more on several factors the group was confident did not cause the decline.
First user contribution to the hall of hallucinations. Sign up, add a few of your own veruscite.com/hallucinations
I have updated my store on Crime De-Coder. (Migrated off of WooCommerce to a custom stripe/Lulu checkout). crimede-coder.com/store/ For professors let me know if you want to use a book for class. Happy to give discounts to your students.
Store | CRIME De-Coder
Books and software for crime analysts: Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python, Large Language Models for Mortals, and more.
crimede-coder.com
New VerusCite blog post, some editors/authors have given pushback on what I flag as an AI hallucination. Often these are articles that exist, but have whole-cloth fabricated elements, like made up authors or a totally wrong periodical. veruscite.com/blog/what-is...
Hallucination of the day in Probation Journal Made the tool easy to go and manually review, so I changed a minor error and not found in this paper on checking more closely. veruscite.com/share/Zi1no1...
Hallucination of the day in a Philosophy journal -- "generating metacognitive feelings of confidence that are easily mistaken for epistemic justification" -- seems like an apt quote veruscite.com/share/98TNXr...
New blog post, using extra credits to just churn out ideas I have had for years. Peer reviewed papers were always symbolic. The ease you can write them now I am hoping spurs academics to consider "doing things in the real world" as a measure of success. andrewpwheeler.com/2026/09/24/a...
Adventures in using AI to write papers
Until recently I had only used the AI tools pay-as-you-go, but lately I have been experimenting with the $20 monthly subscription. So I ended up with extra credits to burn. I would periodically jus…
andrewpwheeler.com
Another 4 hallucinations added to the hall today. Sign up, add a few of your own, veruscite.com/hallucinations
I have created an app to conduct on-demand synthetic control analysis for crime trends at the city level (using Jeff Asher's RTCI data). Check it out at apwheele.github.io/SynthRTCI/
“What works?” is only the beginning. To improve investigative interviewing, we also need to ask: how, for whom, under what conditions, and at what cost? Our paper explores how EMMIE can help bridge research and practice. Open-access at: doi.org/10.1080/1561...
The practical relevance of investigative interviewing research: applying the EMMIE framework to bridge the research-practice gap
Investigative interviewing research has produced valuable insights into effective techniques for gathering information. However, this research often fails to fully bridge the gap between academia a...
doi.org
I have not been the one submitting a paper for years now, can someone confirm that the DOI's are inserted by Springer copyeditors? (Not authors?) So when they cannot find the right DOI they just insert the next best guess (which indeed is not the correct paper). veruscite.com/share/8NKB24...
Part of the difficulty in writing a book on LLM APIs is that they change so often. LLMs for Mortals is 6 months out, and I wrote a recap of updates needed so the book recompiles (mostly just newer model strings). crimede-coder.com/blogposts/20... See post for promo for EPUB and print versions.
LLMs for Mortals 6 months later
I recompiled Large Language Models for Mortals six months after release. Here is what broke, what I got right, and what I got wrong.
crimede-coder.com
I have created a stats page on VerusCite. My guesses of minor errors have been too low, but hallucinated citations (even acknowledging false positives) may only be 2% of all cites. At least among the selected papers scanned veruscite.com/stats
VerusCite Stats
How many papers and citations VerusCite has checked, average processing time, and the share of hallucinated and minor-error citations.
veruscite.com
Part of the difficulty in writing a book on LLM APIs is that they change so often. LLMs for Mortals is 6 months out, and I wrote a recap of updates needed so the book recompiles (mostly just newer model strings). crimede-coder.com/blogposts/20... See post for promo for EPUB and print versions.
LLMs for Mortals 6 months later
I recompiled Large Language Models for Mortals six months after release. Here is what broke, what I got right, and what I got wrong.
crimede-coder.com
Hall of Hallucinations up to 50+ papers and over 200+ hallucinated citations. veruscite.com/hallucinations Sign up, add a few of your own.
Hall of Hallucinations — VerusCite
51 papers and 231 hallucinated citations catalogued in VerusCite's Hall of Hallucinations.
veruscite.com
New blog post on veruscite, several academic papers scan large corpi of papers and estimate the rate of hallucinated citations to be ~1%. I think this estimate is likely low, as they only scan title differences. Authors being wrong is another common source veruscite.com/blog/halluci...
Why estimates of hallucinated citations are probably low
Large scale audits of fabricated references only match on titles. Hand-checking the 10 most recent papers in the hall of hallucinations, a third of the errors were a real title with the wrong authors ...
veruscite.com
New blog post on veruscite, several academic papers scan large corpi of papers and estimate the rate of hallucinated citations to be ~1%. I think this estimate is likely low, as they only scan title differences. Authors being wrong is another common source veruscite.com/blog/halluci...
Why estimates of hallucinated citations are probably low
Large scale audits of fabricated references only match on titles. Hand-checking the 10 most recent papers in the hall of hallucinations, a third of the errors were a real title with the wrong authors ...
veruscite.com
Hallucination of the day in BMC Geriatrics This journal charges over $3000 for article processing fees. My tool is $2. They could raise APCs by less than 0.1% to cover my tool. veruscite.com/share/ujEErd...
Some updates to the Crime Decomposition explorer. Included series for violent and property crimes, a sub-panel so it is easier to see trends across each crime type, and a toggle to index those graphs so global and local start at the same line. This is Scranton, apwheele.github.io/CrimeDecomp/...
Some trends in Pittsburgh crimes are going up: MV Theft, Rape, and Thefts apwheele.github.io/CrimeDecomp/... Data from the real-time-crime-index
Hallucination of the day, an editorial in Bulletin of Mathematical Biology veruscite.com/share/SofefM... Hall of hallucinations is up to 45 papers and growing, contribute some examples!
New VerusCite blog post, Springer AI reference checks are not working veruscite.com/blog/springe... Despite Springer putting out a press release a year ago, this post has clear examples where their internal tool is obviously lacking. Academics should demand more rigor from peer reviewed pubs.
Hallucination of the day in Crime & Delinquency. A tell for current heavy AI use in articles is odd citations. Why would a criminology article cite a nursing article on how to conduct content analysis? veruscite.com/share/Er_8Pb...
Hallucination of the day. It is hard to know if the entire results are just fabricated as well. So did they actually do the experiment? Or just have AI make up the whole paper? The figures in this paper are clearly AI generated as well. veruscite.com/share/4LrRd8...
Hallucination of the day is a bit meta -- an article about using Knowledge graphs to prevent hallucinations in LLMs. It is another example of Google Scholar indexing a fake paper. The authors created this fake paper in a paper in 2025, and it persisted to their more recent 2026 paper.
