Papers are not the output of scientific research in the same way that cars are the output of automobile manufacturing. Papers are merely a vehicle through which a portion of the output of research is shared. We confuse the two at our peril.

I keep trying to explain that to my students regarding class writing, too. The purpose of class writing assignments is not "Oh boy, I get sixteen essays on Trojan Women to grade!", it's to teach those students how to write--and assess if they understand what they've read.

The entire idea of outsourcing the scientific ecosystem to LLMs — as described below — is a concept error that I can scarcely begin to get my head around. sakana.ai/ai-scientist/

Somebody doesn't have enough publications for tenure. 😁

a decade ago I presented on the Taylorist fallacy as applied to higher ed.: the assumption that the output of educational facilities are the graduates on whom we bestow degrees, rather than the skills and knowledge we try to instill in them. Just as papers are a vehicle, so too are graduates.

Further, "scientific research" is more akin to "the automobile industry", which is now thinking beyond build-sell cycles. Even if you insist on Taylorism in manufacturing that may not be the optimal approach for your company or industry. (And almost certainly isn't the ethically most appropriate.)

I would go even further and say they are not an output at all in any sense analogous to manufacturing, but a stage in a continuous process

Considering how human writers treat "papers published" and "citations gathered" as a metric to maximize already, I don't know if this idea is too much of a stretch. Might just be your framing, but this reads like mocking parody to me.