30% of Scientific Papers Are Now AI-Written. The Scientific Record Is Rotting From the Inside.
Over 30% of new arXiv submissions now read as AI-written, up from 0.4% pre-ChatGPT. But the real crisis isn’t just volume β it’s that as human writing adapts to match AI style, the entire baseline of ‘natural’ prose shifts, making detection increasingly impossible and potentially penalizing genuine authors. The scientific record is being quietly contaminated, and we may never know the full extent.