A Scanning Error Created a Fake Science Term—Now AI Won’t Let It Die

A digital investigation reveals how AI can latch on to technical terminology, despite it being complete nonsense. AI trawling the internet’s vast repository of journal articles has reproduced an error that’s made its way into dozens of research papers—and now a team of researchers has found the source of the issue. It’s the question on the tip of everyone’s tongues: What the hell is “vegetative electron microscopy”? As it turns out, the term is nonsensical. It sounds technical—maybe even credible—but it’s complete nonsense. And yet, it’s turning up in scientific papers, AI responses, and even peer-reviewed journals. So… how did this phantom phrase become part of our collective knowledge? As painstakingly reported by Retraction Watch in February, the term may have been pulled from parallel columns of text in a 1959 paper on bacterial cell walls. The AI seemed to have jumped the columns, reading two unrelated lines of text as one contiguous sentence, according to one investigator. T ... Read full article.