Fake-looking citations can sink a report

Models are good at the shape of references: authors, years, italics, page ranges. They are not a library catalog. They can:

• invent article titles that sound plausible
• mix real author names with wrong years
• point to URLs that never existed
• attribute a quote to the wrong paper

Looking formal is a pattern. Existence is a fact check.

For every AI-suggested source:

1. Find it independently (school library search, Google Scholar if allowed, teacher-provided database).
2. Open it (or a trusted abstract/record).
3. Confirm the claim — does it actually support your sentence?
4. Only then copy the citation details from the real record.

If you cannot find it in five to ten minutes, do not use it. Find a real source instead.

• Perfect page numbers for articles you cannot locate
• Journals with slightly off names (“Nature Ecology Letters Weekly”)
• Quotes with no page you can check
• “According to experts” with a citation that doesn’t mention the topic

One fake citation can make a teacher doubt your whole report — even the parts you researched honestly.

Suggest types of sources I should look for (museum site, encyclopedia, class text). Do not invent specific article titles or URLs. I will find real ones myself.

Or paste a real source you already have and ask for help formatting that — after you confirm it.

A citation can be real while the quoted sentence is not in that article. If AI gives you a quotation plus a reference, find the passage. No passage, no quote. Paraphrase only what you actually read, and still cite the real work. Teachers notice mismatched quotes quickly — and they read them as a trust break, not a formatting oops.