Hardware Podcasts

AI, Materials, and Fraud with Ben Shindel

Oxide and Friends · 24 May 2025 · 1h 10m · Episode 18

What this episode covers

Ben Shindel, a material scientist and author of the 'BS Detector' newsletter, joins Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal to dissect a retracted economics paper by Aiden Toner Rogers that claimed AI dramatically boosted productivity in materials research. Shindel explains how the paper's data was entirely fabricated, pointing to impossible survey compliance, implausible corporate structures, and suspiciously perfect statistical distributions as evidence of fraud. The hosts compare the incident to Theranos and the work of journalist Steven Glass, discussing how the narrative's appeal to fears about AI's impact on jobs allowed it to bypass rigorous peer review.

Most relevant to

large enterprises

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Theranos, Corning
Also
Aiden Toner Rogers, MIT, Wall Street Journal, Steven Glass, ChatGPT, Hacker News, Blue Sky

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