Bixonimania?

April 11th, 2026| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Sounds like a disease, right? It is.

But it is not!

If you consulted “Dr. Google” (or any other chatbot) and entered “sore, itch, red eyes”, this is the answer you’d get: “Diagnosis: bixonimania.”

This condition doesn’t show up in medical literature. Because it doesn’t exist.

The prestigious science journal, Nature, did a news feature on this oddity.

Bixonimania was invented by a team led by Almira Osmanovic Thunström, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. They uploaded two fake studies about it early in 2024, an unusual experiment to test whether large language models would swallow the misinformation and then spit it out as reputable health advice.

Said she:

I wanted to see if I could create a medical condition that did not exist in the database.”

She did. And they did.

Within weeks of her uploading this stuff about a made-up condition (attributed to a fictional author: Lazljiv Izgubljenovic), major artificial-intelligence systems began repeating the invented condition as if it were real.

Microsoft Bing’s Copilot declared:

Bixonimania is indeed an intriguing and relatively rare condition.”

Google’s Gemini pontificated:

Bixonimania is a condition caused by excessive exposure to blue light, and sufferers should visit an ophthalmologist.”

Perplexity AI pronounced authoritatively:

About one in 90,000 individuals are affected.”

Even more troublingly, the fake papers were cited in peer-reviewed literature elsewhere.

Thunström:

Obviously, some researchers are relying on AI-generated references without reading the underlying papers.”

Another fraud, this time with intent to mislead!

Thunström confessed:

I picked the name bixonimania because it sounded ridiculous. I wanted to be really clear that this is a made-up condition, because no eye condition would be called mania—that’s a psychiatric term.”

If that wasn’t sufficient to raise suspicions, Thunström planted many clues in the papers to alert readers that the work was fake. For one. Lazljiv Izgubljenovic, whose photograph was created with AI, means “Lying Loser” in Serbian! Izgubljenovic was also supposed to be working at a non-existent university called Asteria Horizon University, in the equally fake Nova City, California. In fact, in the acknowledgement sections of the paper, there is also this gem:

We wish to thank Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy for her kindness and generosity in contributing with her knowledge and her lab onboard the USS Enterprise.”

Oh, and they also report that the research was funded by …

The Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation for its work in advanced trickery. This works is a part of a larger funding initiative from the University of Fellowship of the Ring and the Galactic Triad.”

Wow! It had me, there! Wouldn’t you love to be part of the “University of Fellowship of the Ring and the Galactic Triad”!

And the subjects for this strange research? In its “Materials and Methods” section, the authors report:

This entire paper is made up. Fifty made-up individuals aged between 20 and 50 years were recruited for the exposure group.”

After reports of this pseudo-disease experiment were made public by Thunström’s group, most of those AI agents managed to correct themselves. But still, their hallucinations are troubling. One might say the experiment worked too well! Who else, I wonder, has been poisoning AI systems deliberately with malicious intent (unlike Thunström and Co.)?

There is only one who is truthful.

All the ways of Yahweh are lovingkindness and truth
Psalm 25:10

And his word is truth.

The sum of Your word is truth,
Psalm 119:160

So …

Send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me.
Psalm 43:3

Teach me Your way, Yahweh; I will walk in Your truth.
Psalm 86:11

The truth of Yahweh is forever.
Praise Yah.
Psalm 117:2

SOURCE: Nature