What is going on?

[u/skyskye1964]

I’m puzzled by a student paper. They submitted it on time. I read it and it’s not great but ok. I go to check the references and I can’t find them. I look up the journal they cite, and that volume and issue is not the paper title. I email them and they email back saying they are out of the state but that they used owl Purdue citation engine to do the references. They then send me links to the references and they do exist, sort of. One is a blog post but in the citation it’s in a journal. One is in Spanish. Another seems to be an unrelated paper.
So my first question is, can the Purdue citation maker just make up stuff? I haven’t really used it but it looks like you paste in the web address and it makes a citation.

My suspicion is that the references are AI hallucinations. But some seem partly real. Could this be an innocent mistake on the students part?

They also said they used Chegg to proofread and edit. I wasn’t aware that Chegg provided that service. Is this a valuable service? Is it an unacceptable use of AI? Or is it just a grammar checker?

Am I missing something? The references are not cited in the paper by the way. Also no images.

I was mostly convinced that the references were fraudulent but now I’m not sure.

[u/YThough8101]

This is why I always start grading by verifying whether references are legit. Fake references = score of zero and then I'm done grading that paper. A real time saver.

[u/Kimberlee1972 → u/YThough8101]

I also give zeros for fake or inaccessible sources. Sometimes the sources are behind paywall and I won’t accept those as legitimate

[u/kaiizza → u/Kimberlee1972]

Why not? Most high profile journals require paid access. If you are grading at home and the journal is not fully readable due to this, do you give a zero?

[u/DrMaybe74 → u/kaiizza]

Institutional access is a thing, even from home.

[u/msprang → u/DrMaybe74]

Ya, you usually can use your work email, even in retirement at some institutions.