GoKawiil'Vegetative electron microscopy' error traced to 1959 OCR mistake, found in dozens of papers
Retraction Watch identified the nonsensical phrase 'vegetative electron microscopy' appearing repeatedly in recent academic papers. The term originated from a faulty optical character recognition scan of a 1959 paper that merged 'vegetative cell' from one text column with 'electron microscopy' from an adjacent column. The phrase has since propagated into databases and, apparently, into AI-generated or AI-assisted manuscripts submitted to journals.