> These programs work well in intensely impoverished areas

[Citation needed]

I'm not saying you're wrong, or even that I disagree; But the catch here is that the places where this program presumably has the biggest impact are also the places where little to no data is available.

But also, if the OLPC are actually existing and being used... they have network connectivity. Presumably they need some form of internet to "give access to information that otherwise just wouldn't be there" if only intermittently or by proxy, which in turn should provide a way to collect usage statistics and/or track students in these hard to survey populations.

Either way you can't claim they work well in any population without actual data or reports to support that claim.
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... most likely in brain development. Some people mature very quickly, others never mature at all. As the saying goes , some people grow old and wise, others just grow old.

The 1990s called, they want their meme back.

Mad cow disease, seriously? That hasn't been a thing for 30 years.

"Just because some PFAS chemicals are toxic and last forever doesnt necessarily mean that all of them are evil"

The problem is the C-F bond. Its very hard for our ecosystem to break it and even if some of the molecule gets broken down there will still be a flourinated residue compound that isn't.

Yup. Not many people in other countries want the beef on their plate pumped full of antibiotics just to promote growth and to hell with the bacteria resistance it causes as a side effect.

A database is useless without data too. Most computer programs are.

> Did the advisor not check the student's work?

The student made up the data, claiming if came from a legitimate source. Other than independently trying to get that same data from the same source and verifying it, how exactly do you 'check the work?'

The review is typically focused on how the data is processed and if the conclusions follow logically from the data presented. If you just make shit up at the very start it can be very difficult to catch or prove short of completely redoing the study - which is in fact how a most fraud is caught, when someone tries to replicate a study's results and fails.
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"Well, the LLMs don't really consist of "code" per se"

Oh they do, a LOT of it, all the way from the high level python libraries such as TensorFlow, via sigmoid or relu activation functions down to the low level CUDA GPU libs. The only part that is pure data is the weighting of the neurons which themselves are code.

Whatever happened to all the gullible mugs who paid $$$ for the right to not actually own but [do something with] some questionable art work? Wonder if there'll ever see their money again... hmmm.....

Meanwhile, the shysters who flogged this meaningless digital crap are probably drinking cocktails by their pools while thinking up another way to fleece idiots. Oh look, here comes AI...

So how long before it can start to rewrite its own code to "improve" itself?

I'm only half joking.

Just saying...

If agentic AI were involved, given sufficient prompts and naivete on the part of Toner-Rogers, the AI could have performed the registration of the false Corning website on its own and even fooled the human researcher into believing the materials were real. Won't be long before we're all questioning whether the answers we get from our computers are legitimate or a tremendously detailed hallucination conjured to match what we appear to want to see.

Its always good to hear ChatGPTs opinion on the matter in hand.

He'll go a long way in the AI tech-bro world.

This should be a career-ending move. Demonstrating this level of dishonesty should bar him from holding a graduate degree of any kind, really, let alone anything in scientific research.

Increasing and enforcing standards is needed, but also higher standards mean nothing if there are no consequences. Make it clear that this kind of nonsense will obliterate your academic career.
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