Question 1: Does the paper exist?
Question 2: Does it support your claim?
Free tools answer Question 1. They check every reference against CrossRef, PubMed, and OpenAlex in seconds. Use one — CiteTrue, SwanRef, or Citely.
No tool answers Question 2. And Question 2 is where papers get retracted: a real, correctly formatted reference attached to a claim the source never made. AI produces this often, because it finds a paper on the right topic and staples it to your sentence.
The fix is manual, for now. Open the source. Find the exact line that backs your claim. If there is no line, cut the citation.
I am building a tool that answers Question 2 — it reads the source and flags where it does not support your claim. Early access, first 100 get a free audit of one paper:
https://least-visited-lottery-fitness.trycloudflare.com
Open your sources. AI assists; you stay accountable.
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