Inaugural class 2023 at ENBT discussed current challenges in the integrity of scientific research

The National School of Tropical Botany of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (ENBT/JBRJ) received, on Tuesday afternoon, May 2, the lecture of Professor Sonia Vasconcelos, of the Institute of Medical Biochemistry Leopoldo de Meis, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IBqM/UFRJ). The speaker first presented a brief history of the discussions on integrity in the scientific research process since the 1990s, mainly involving questions of authorship, plagiarism and their connections with credit and responsibility, as well as the role played by competitiveness in the scientific environment.

Sonia then addressed the new challenges to research integrity brought about by the emergence of Large Language Models (LLM), such as ChatGPT. She pointed out that the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) brings the need for us to rethink, among other things, how authenticity will be established in papers in which LLMs are used. "Soon, we will see students discussing how they used LLMs to do a literature review, for example. These are new times, we will have to deal with that," she said.

From an experiment she conducted with ChatGPT, the researcher showed that the tool may be more interesting for experienced researchers, with knowledge that allows them to critically evaluate the answers obtained, than for beginners. Among the problems that LLMs present are, for example, "hallucinations", which are answers with no connection to reality or based on false premises. Despite this, Sonia Vasconcelos understands that AI is here to stay and will affect the way society, and especially the academic community, organizes itself.

"What sustains good science until today is trust," said the researcher, adding that we have now entered a transition period and there is no way to predict all the developments, in issues of integrity, ethics, authorship, that will present themselves from the use of artificial intelligence in the work of scientists.

The opening table of the Inaugural Class had the presence of the substitute president of the JBRJ, Eliezer Sousa Nunes, and the substitute director of the ENBT, Luciana Orteil Lancellotti.