SSRN pulls 257 papers by U. Chicago's Nicholas Polson

The online preprint platform SSRN removed 257 papers written or co-written by University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor Nicholas Polson and froze the accounts used to upload them, The Washington Post reported. The platform acted after other academics raised questions about a surge of uploads under his name. Polson had posted roughly 200 papers over nine months of 2026, on top of 14 books published this year.

SSRN's framing was blunt. The platform requires scholars to disclose AI use, and Polson's papers did not. But it said disclosure was not the crux. "What is more important is the unusual pattern of paper submissions."

The pattern is what drew attention. Most of the papers sat in advanced statistics and mathematics, but the run also stretched across why players excel at strategic games like chess, how TikTok serves up certain videos, and financial pressures that could lead to cuts in Social Security. A UCLA professor put it this way: "It is not just the volume, but also the diversity of topics and the differences from previous papers that matter." A Columbia statistician who read one of the papers said, "You could tell that a chatbot wrote parts of the paper."

Almost none of the work went through peer review. According to the reporting, only one paper was even submitted to a journal.

Polson has not conceded the point. In an email cited by the Post, he dismissed the academic community's criticism as "jealousy and a desire to hijack my writing process and methods." One of the 14 books listed under his name this year carries the title "The Green-Eyed Animal: Sexual Jealousy."