🧱In research, it is not quantity that counts: we have always known it, but the use of AI drives accumulation, just accumulation

This article, published on 11 May 2026, shows that, rather than working on a subject in order to draw relevant conclusions from it, publications appear which are no more than the outcome, or the extension, of other publications previously collected. Reading notes.

Everything is mixed together, everything is repeated, and it ends up claiming to be drawn from the observation of reality.

But nothing is observed directly from reality: it is simply the gathering of the most diverse studies previously written on a subject.

Studies, possibly of poor quality and fairly disparate, are collated — AI being the perfect instrument for that — and this produces a new study, with a great many footnotes and a great many assertions.

This newly published study will in turn feed the next publications, which will be built in the same way.

That is how new “experts” can multiply: to publish, one need be neither very learned nor go and observe the real.

The number of publications is indeed exploding. Mechanically.

The use of AI has made all this easier.

And yet we so badly need innovative thought — thought which does not necessarily take up what earlier publications have said.

That is what is expected of the University.

For the University must not be made up of “repeaters”, but of professors who observe reality, think for themselves and imagine.

The classical definition of the University is more than ever required. It is more than ever in danger.