Its the question on the tip of everyones tongues: What the hell is vegetative electron microscopy?

As it turns out, the term is nonsensical.

It sounds technicalmaybe even crediblebut its complete nonsense.

The MareNostrum 5 supercomputer in Barcelona.

The MareNostrum 5 supercomputer in Barcelona.(Photo by Adria Puig/Anadolu via Getty Images)

And yet, its turning up in scientific papers, AI responses, and even peer-reviewed journals.

So… how did this phantom phrase become part of our collective knowledge?

The fossilization process started with a simple mistake, as the team reported.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, April 10, 2025.

Back in the 1950s, two papers were published in Bacteriological Reviews that were later scanned and digitized.

That may be all it took for the false terminology to slip back into the scientific record.

This suggests the nonsense term may now be permanently embedded in AI knowledge bases.

Sue the T. rex.

But as tricky as it was to find the source of the errors, eliminating them is even harder.

Thats besides the fact that leading AI companies arefamously resistantto sharing their training data.

But AI companies are only part of the problemjournal-hungry publishers are another beast.

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon attends the executive order signing ceremony to reduce the size and scope of the Education Department in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.

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