Drazen, J.M., Yu, K., Healey, E., Leong, T., Kohane, I.S., & Manrai, A.K. (2024, May 30). Medical Artificial Intelligence and Human Values. New England Journal of Medicine, 390(20), 1895-1904. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra2214183
ChatGPT may respond to prompts with information that is false and/or outdated. Just as you would with any research, it is important to fact-check and use additional, authoritative sources of information before taking ChatGPT’s answer as definitive. Special care and attention should be paid when doing research whose results may have harmful impact on people, for example, Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
When doing research using traditional Library resources (such as the catalogue or databases), you may find resources by combining keywords, Boolean operators, and using facets that filter data. The output is usually a list of resources that you need to look through and identify those that are most relevant to your research question.
By contrast, ChatGPT takes prompts using natural language and the responses tend to be less focused on identifying specific resources and more on summarizing information. For this reason, special attention should be paid to the wording used in the prompt, as it could bias the type of reply obtained.
The Issue
Citations help the reader see and understand where your information is coming from: it helps them follow the information trail. If the reader wants to follow up on a particular point that you’re making, or a particular reference you have cited, they can do that because citations communicate information about your sources in a standardized format.
Beyond allowing others to understand where you obtained information, there is a strong ethical component to using citations. In an academic environment, you must credit ideas that are not your own, and citations are the primary way credit is given in the academic world. Citations allow you to use the ideas and expertise of others and integrate that material with your own thoughts appropriately and ethically.