PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND PRACTICES - COLUMN 196
the Brazilian coastline, all listed affiliations in India. Guedes reached out to one of the editors-in-chief of the journal at the time, Andres Folguera, on March 10 to notify the journal about the issues.
“As Guedes and his colleagues noted in a
May 19 blog post on the Brazilian Association for Quaternary Studies (ABEQUA) website, ‘there were no citations of work conducted in Brazil or by researchers who had previ- ously worked in the region.’
“According to the August 3 retraction notice, the authors ‘were asked to comment upon the presence of these references in their work and acknowledged that the refer- ences were not correct.’”
I urge those interested in the details to download the article from retractionwatch. com.
The dangers of using Chat GPT and AI Bot recordings An article, “Deeply personal Chat GPT
conversations leaked into Google searches,” in the September ’25 issue of PCWorld, p. 11-12, warns that “Anything powered by a large language model is generally fed right back into it for more training.” While the article focused on personal information that could be searched by Google, the concern should be equally valid for sensitive cor- porate or client information that is posted somewhere in your personal computer or company data files. According to the article, OpenAI’s co-chief security officer stated, “the ability of search engines to index shared posts has been removed.” This is a reminder to be very careful when using AI.
Mark J. Howell’s article “AI Bots are join-
ing your calls” in the Jul/Aug/Sep TPG, p.17, provides another warning about AI, in this case recordings of conversations you may have on Zoom, Teams, or similar programs. These recordings, what Howell calls “AI Bots,” may be loaded into the searchable databases that form the backbone of AI technology. Because of the sensitive nature of many of these calls for both personal and business reasons, be very careful about how they are used. Howell ends his article with the statement that he uses AI, including in the preparation of his article. However, his warning to be careful stands.
Sleuth unearths citation, authorship issues at earth sciences journal
Retractionwatch.com issued an article, Sleuth unearths citation, authorship issues at earth sciences journal. “Carlos Conforti Ferreira Guedes, a geology professor at the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil,
www.aipg.org
came across a paper in the Journal of South American Earth Sciences earlier this year (2025) with irrelevant, and in some cases nonexistent, references.
“Made-up citations can indicate the use
of generative AI in crafting the paper – but another detail caught his attention as particularly odd: The researchers on the paper, a study on the transformation of
False ‘geofacts’ and promotion of bad policies Members of the public can and do use AI
to produce articles/papers on various top- ics. These articles/papers can contain false ‘geofacts’ that are then used to promote bad public policies. When we read such faulty geoscience information that is contained within such an article/paper, we need to
Jan.Feb.Mar 2026 • TPG 39
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