Overview

AI-Generated Rat Anatomy Illustration, also known as AI Mouse Stem Cell Diagram or AI-Generated Rat Balls Pass Peer Review, refers to discussions, jokes and memes about the peer-reviewed science and technology journal Frontiers publishing a stem-cell research-related paper that used AI-generated diagrams and charts. Scientists and other users on the internet shared images of what appeared to be an anatomically inaccurate cross-section of a rat alongside equally incomprehensible charts and cell diagrams on February 15th, 2024, criticizing Frontiers for publishing the paper.

Background

On February 13th, 2024, researchers Xinyu Guo, Liang Dong and Dingjun Hao from the Department of Spine Surgery in Hong Hui Hospital and Xi'an Honghui Hospital published a peer-reviewed paper titled, "Cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells in relation to JAK/STAT signaling pathway," in Frontiers.^[1]

On February 15th, X^[2] user @DrCJ_Houldcroft then made a post citing images from the paper, saying, "Erm, how did Figure 1 get past a peer reviewer?!" The post gathered over 9,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Also on February 15th, X^[3] user @cliff_swan posted more images from the paper, writing, "Article published a couple of days ago. Every figure in the article is AI generated and totally incomprehensible. This passed 'peer-review.'" The post gathered over 50,000 likes in a day (seen below).

The paper was also posted to the subreddit /r/LabRats^[4] on February 15th, 2024, where it gathered over 1,600 upvotes in a day.

Developments

Following the backlash, Frontiers^[8] issued an "Expression of Concern" followed by a retraction of the paper on February 16th, 2024 (seen below).

Online Reactions

On February 15th, 2024, X^[5] user @SynBio1 wrote, "Somehow my reviewers always needed 3 months of convincing about the choice of Kruskal–Wallis versus Wilcoxon Rank-Sum as the test of statistical significance for supplementary figure 7j but giant AI generated rat balls just sails right though sure why not." The post gathered over 3,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Many researchers joked about the diagrams, such as X^[6] user @gramnegativity on February 15th writing, "I hate when I’m a Cmimotom minding my own business and then Spacogtic sstem cells unde limcuce of the JAK pathrway." The post gathered over 1,000 likes in a day (seen below, left).

On the same day, X^[7] user @molbiomarie wrote "an exclusive look at my next paper 🧵," alongside a nonsensical AI-generated diagram of what appears to be a brain stem. The image gathered over 1,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References