Q. ChatGPT gave me citations that I can't find. What should I do?
The free version of ChatGPT makes up citations that don't exist. Those in the field define this made-up information as hallucinations.
ChatGPT may provide articles by an author who writes on this topic, or choose a journal that published on this topic. The title, page numbers, dates, however may be completely fictional.
Because ChatGPT is not connected to web search, it has no way of identifying actual sources.
You may try to find the sources by searching for the journal title, clicking on the title of a record that shows available online, clicking on the full-text link provided, choosing the year, then pasting in the article title in the search box. Or...run your article title search in Google Scholar.
Know, however, that chances are this source does not exist.
It's better to use ChatGPT for :
- Brainstorming
- Constructive criticism of your writing
- Explaining concepts at multiple difficulty levels
- Summarizing long texts
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Other text-related tasks.
ChatGPT works from training data--a huge database of information that's somewhat dated. This training data is not "connected" to the vast Internet.
Instead of using sources from ChatGPT, use those found in Library Databases or Google Scholar instead.