I don’t read the NeurIPS statement as malicious per se, but I do think it’s incomplete
They’re right that a citation error doesn’t automatically invalidate the technical content of a paper, and that there are relatively benign ways these mistakes get introduced. But focusing on intent or severity sidesteps the fact that citations, claims, and provenance are still treated as narrative artifacts rather than things we systematically verify
Once that’s the case, the question isn’t whether any single paper is “invalid” but whether the workflow itself is robust under current incentives and tooling.
A student group at Duke has been trying to think about with Liberata, i.e. what publishing looks like if verification, attribution, and reproducibility are first class rather than best effort
They have a short explainer here that lays out the idea if useful context helps: https://liberata.info/
They’re right that a citation error doesn’t automatically invalidate the technical content of a paper, and that there are relatively benign ways these mistakes get introduced. But focusing on intent or severity sidesteps the fact that citations, claims, and provenance are still treated as narrative artifacts rather than things we systematically verify
Once that’s the case, the question isn’t whether any single paper is “invalid” but whether the workflow itself is robust under current incentives and tooling.
A student group at Duke has been trying to think about with Liberata, i.e. what publishing looks like if verification, attribution, and reproducibility are first class rather than best effort
They have a short explainer here that lays out the idea if useful context helps: https://liberata.info/