A University of Chicago Professor Has Authored 258 Papers in 2026—and They Look AI-Generated
Nicholas Polson has authored 258 academic papers in 2026 (so far)
Nicholas Polson, a statistician at the University of Chicago's business school, has posted 258 working papers to SSRN in 2026 alone, including six on August 26. One 80-page paper, 'Theories of Human Connection,' synthesizes thinkers from Becker to Gwyneth Paltrow and cites John Gottman's discredited 94% divorce-prediction claim. Blogger Andrew Gelman questions whether these are AI-generated, intellectual squatting, or an experiment, and suggests Polson withdraw them and write a genuine article instead.
I wonder what prompts were used by Polson and his coauthor to write this article. I guess the prompts did not include, “Evaluate implausible claims skeptically.”
- buran77
> “An Interdisciplinary Synthesis Across Economics, Psychology, Biology, Philosophy, Game Theory, and Spiritual Tradition.”
If one were inclined, they could shorten the title to "AI Synthesis Across Economics, Psychology, Biology, Philosophy, Game Theory, and Spiritual Tradition." Maybe that's an Easter egg.
AI submissions, soon AI reviewers, and shortly after only AI readers.
The guy's name is "nosloP" spelled backwards. Maybe spelled normally it's supposed to signify the opposite.
- gus_massa
IIUC there are not 258 academic papers published in serious peer review journals [1], only 258 "preprints" in a free preprint server. It's like posting in WordPress but using a PDF instead of html [2]. I guess they start with "abstract" and end with "References" so they looks like papers.
For some weird reason in the last few years people forgot the differences and now any PDF is an "academic paper" [3]. (I'd be more annoyed, if the internal system of the university also forgot the difference. I'm afraid to ask.)
[1] Whatever "serious" means, that's a huge can of worms.
[2] They get an doi and a version number in case of a change.
[3] A few years ago they were call "whitepapers".
- hangrybear666
Vadim Sokolov, the co-author of the paper mentioned in the post defends this insane practice and says they reviewed at least one of the 258 generated papers with their own eyes, they are thus not fake papers.
Source: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/08/27/258/#comme...
- tobias2014
Why would someone ruin their academic credentials and reputation (at a reputable university) like this? Maybe there was nothing to begin with? Otherwise I can't understand this.
- prometheus1992
Writing is a technology that served us well for over 5000 years, but now times are a changing. Written media will cease to provide any value in the next decade i think. In person chats/Public speaking will be revered again.
Edit - people are assuming that i want this to happen. no, i don't. i am reading more than i ever did before, maybe out of rebellion. i am just stating what I THINK is to come. it might not go this way at all.
- jbgreer
Slacker. Dr. C. Louis-Charles, Claude to his friends, has 69 books available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0GZBYQDQY/allbooks?ing...
- lhk931122
Are these the type of papers that can be uploaded to arxiv? The citations can be manipulated then, through self-reference between papers.
- coderintherye
If AI submissions, then why not go a step further and have AI reviewers?
Perhaps this will help bring more scrutiny to the metric of publishing quantity not being as valuable as it has been treated.