📖 Today’s lesson
Lesson 8: A citation is a claim, not a fact.
Models produce text that looks like citations because citations look like text. A well-formatted reference with a plausible author, year and journal is not evidence that the reference exists.
Why this matters: This is the failure that gets students into real trouble. Fabricated references have made it into submitted coursework and into court filings. From today, treat every citation a model gives you as unverified until you have personally found it.