A study that claimed OpenAI’s ChatGPT can positively impact student learning has been retracted nearly one year after publication. The journal publisher, Springer Nature, cited “discrepancies” in the analysis and a lack of confidence in the conclusions—but not before the paper racked up hundreds of citations and made the rounds on social media.

“The paper’s authors made some very attention-grabbing claims about the benefits of ChatGPT on learning outcomes,” said Ben Williamson, a senior lecturer at the Centre for Research in Digital Education and the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, in an email to Ars. “It was treated by many on social media as one of the first pieces of hard, gold standard evidence that ChatGPT, and generative AI more broadly, benefits learners.”

The retracted paper attempted to quantify “the effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking” by analyzing results from 51 previous research studies. Its meta-analysis calculated the effect size between various studies’ experimental groups that used ChatGPT in education and control groups that did not use the AI chatbot.

That analysis supposedly showed how “ChatGPT has a large positive impact on improving learning performance” along with a “moderately positive impact on enhancing learning perception” and “fostering higher-order thinking,” according to the researchers who authored the paper. The now-retracted results first appeared in the journal Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, published by Springer Nature on May 6, 2025.

“In some cases it appears it was synthesizing very poor quality studies, or mixing together findings from studies that simply cannot be accurately compared due to very different methods, populations, and samples,” Williamson told Ars. “It really seemed like a paper that should not have been published in the first place.”

Williamson also questioned the timing of the paper’s publication just two and a half years after OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. “It is not feasible that dozens of high-quality studies about ChatGPT and learning performance could have been conducted, reviewed, and published in that time,” Williamson said.

A legacy that may outlive retraction

Since its publication, the study has been cited 262 times in other papers published by Springer Nature’s peer-reviewed journals and received a total of 504 citations from both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources. It also attracted nearly half a million readers and received enough online attention to rank in the 99th percentile for journal articles in terms of attention score.

When you pull into the Assembly, as it’s familiarly known, one of the first things you see is a speed limit sign: 14 MPH. Practically, the quirky number says slow down more effectively. But it’s a symbol, too, of a world set apart. Just five minutes off the interstate, the whole place moves at a different pace, a living remnant of a 19th-century phenomenon. 

If you trace the Cumberland Plateau northward, its highlands eventually give way to the Allegheny Plateau, a kissing cousin that runs to western New York. There, in 1874, the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly was established — a training ground for Protestant church workers that President Ulysses S. Grant visited the following year. Its purely religious focus expanded over time, growing into a curated spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and recreational program. Today, it’s known as the Chautauqua Institution, borrowing the Haudenosaunee place name.

From a beautiful lakeshore in New York, this movement for adult learning and enrichment spread with gusto. Hundreds of “Chautauquas” or “assemblies” were formed in rural locales across the U.S. and Canada. Others took the concept on the road, popping up a “tent Chautauqua” for a handful of days and then circuiting on. Pastors giving sermons, lecturers making speeches, musicians and other performers offering entertainment — all played essential roles in the life of an assembly. Some describe them as the original TED talks. The movement also gave us book clubs. 

In 1882, Tennessee hopped aboard the band-wagon. That fall, an ecumenical group of leaders drew up a charter for the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly. The following summer, teachers from denominations across the South gathered for the inaugural session. A campus was raised, and, as in New York, the program quickly expanded to serve a broader audience with something of an edifying vacation. 

The core religious and educational program became intermingled with a social scene and, of course, courtship. Among those attending the Monteagle Assembly in the 1890s was John Bell Keeble, an attorney from Nashville and my great grandfather. According to the story passed down to me, he heard Emmie Frazer give a dramatic reading in the auditorium and was instantly smitten. She, apparently, had plans for a carriage ride with a suitor the following day. Putting his lawyerly wiles to personal use, John rented out all the horses. Her only option would be to ride with him. 

The stratagem worked. The two married. In August 1905, one of their six children, my grandfather Edwin, was born in the Assembly and, I’m told, placed in a laundry basket. Edwin would become a celebrated architect in Nashville, designing churches, homes, the Life & Casualty Tower downtown, and Memorial — Vanderbilt’s iconic gym.

In 1950, Edwin and my grandmother, Alice Beasley, met at a porch party in the Assembly. She’d been swept into the goings on of Monteagle summers by her own grandmother, Lucy Pulliam Williamson. The day the architect and the redhead from West Tennessee met was the Fourth of July and — forgive me for this — there were fireworks of the best kind. 

Despite our efforts to build a more liberatory mental healthcare system, psychosis remains one of the most stigmatised psychological experiences. Even people who are otherwise sceptical of psychiatry often see psychosis as different, as more severe and inherently pathological, where social explanations no longer apply and medical authority, including non-consensual interventions, are seen as unavoidable. Psychosis is framed as something that cannot be understood in relation to the world a person lives in, only managed or contained.

This assumption carries weight: it not only shapes how psychotic people are treated, but it also acts as a barrier to meaningful change in our mental healthcare system. When we make exceptions for some people or experiences, we suggest that our stated aims are not fit for purpose – that the social model is insufficient, and that psychiatric abolition, or even substantive reform, is utopian rather than realistic. My aim is to challenge these assumptions, exploring how psychosis can be understood using the social model and supported outside of the psychiatric system.

When I share my critiques of psychiatry with others, a common rebuttal is “what if you had a loved one that was psychotic — would you still think the same?” My answer to that is, undoubtedly, yes. My understanding of psychosis is shaped partly by watching people close to me struggle with beliefs that caused them real fear, yet were judged in completely different ways depending on their cultural fit. Some of these beliefs were immediately pathologised as symptoms of psychosis, while others — despite having the same structure, certainty, and distress — were accepted as normal because they aligned with dominant social anxieties around culture, religion and politics. Seeing this double standard up close made it impossible for me to view ‘psychosis’ or ‘delusion’ as a discrete and purely clinical category. It felt less like a measure of innate disorder and more like a reflection of the specific fears society is willing to legitimise, and those it will not.

The medical model presents psychosis as a combination of delusions (fixed, false beliefs) and hallucinations (sensory experiences that others don’t also experience) that cause distress or impairment in daily life. In psychiatry’s own terms, most delusions are ‘non-bizarre’, meaning the content involves situations possible in real life, like being followed or being in trouble with the police. Hallucinations are usually related to the delusion’s content, such as seeing the person you believe is following you. This means even when a person’s beliefs do not reflect their circumstances, the content usually draws on recognisable, real-world events. They are not random or incomprehensible, but shaped by the social and material environment in which the person lives.

Not only does the genuine plausibility of most psychotic beliefs allow them to take hold, but so does the atomised and precarious nature of our society. It is far easier to become paranoid about people around you when you don’t know them, and when you are living with real, unresolved stress and injustice. In these conditions, people naturally try to make sense of their distress by locating its source, especially in a society that offers few collective explanations or avenues for change. As a result, the experience of psychosis is often far more distressing and debilitating for those living in urban areas and in neoliberal countries. A study found that London and Paris had the highest rates of psychosis in the world, with the strongest predictor of psychosis being a low rate of owner-occupied housing — the metric used to measure housing instability, and by extension inequality. A separate study found that the experience of psychosis varied wildly around the world: while paranoid and distressing symptoms are common in individualistic societies, psychosis is viewed neutrally or even positively in more community-oriented societies. The paranoid, persecutory beliefs we associate with psychosis are not inherent to it; they don’t prove a disordered mind, but rather a disordered society.

This becomes clearer when we consider the prevalence of ‘delusion-like beliefs‘ in the general population, and how analogous these are — both in content and impact on the individual — to those that are pathologised as psychotic. Fixed, false, and distressing beliefs are common, often relating to victimisation: there are far more social media stories of “stalking” and “almost abduction” than are statistically credible. These anxieties are distressing, and often disrupt people’s lives, but they’re also understandable. In a patriarchal society where crime is common and its fearmongered media coverage even more so, “stranger danger” takes precedence over community. In such a society, it is common, natural, and certainly not ‘crazy’ to distrust others.

Crucially, this pattern isn’t limited to beliefs commonly labeled as ‘delusional’. Many culturally accepted beliefs operate in much the same way: they draw on shared narratives, become deeply personal, and shape people’s daily lives, even resulting in sensory experiences that are analogous to hallucinations. For example, religious or spiritual frameworks may involve beliefs about divine punishment, demonic forces, or apocalyptic futures; while political conspiracies may centre on shadowy elites, impending wars, or secret plots. These beliefs can be intensely distressing, all-consuming, and resistant to counter-evidence, yet they are rarely medicalised when they align with dominant cultural or ideological norms. My point is not to pathologise religion or conspiracy, but to highlight the absurdity of pathologising beliefs at all. If distressing, unprovable beliefs are ubiquitous across society, then the act of singling some out as symptoms of illness appears less like science and more like a social judgement about whose interpretations of the world are permitted.

This means that the harm lies less in what people believe than in how those beliefs are responded to. Regardless of content, the best way to approach distressing beliefs is with honesty and respect. For example, a person I know talked to me recently about their fear of stranger abductions, and how they believe a trafficking ring will abduct them if they leave the house. I discussed this belief with them like I would with anyone, regardless of diagnosis. I affirmed their right to be afraid but explained why I thought the belief was not credible; I showed them the true statistics for stranger abductions and stated my opinion as to why it’s such a prevalent yet irrational fear. That it’s the moral panic of “stranger danger”, similar to other moral panics in that it keeps people fearful of, and so separate from, their communities, stifling attempts to organise and shifting blame for social problems onto some ‘other’ rather than addressing their structural causes. This explanation reflects my real view, and it starts a discussion rather than shutting one down. In contrast, responding to psychotic people with lies, such as by disingenuously affirming the content of distressing beliefs, or misleading someone into compliance with a narrow model of ‘recovery’, strip those interactions of honesty and agency. Whether the aim is to reduce disruption, secure cooperation, or facilitate treatment, deception denies people their autonomy. Being repeatedly lied to, managed, or misled in this way is often noticed, and it understandably reinforces paranoia.

The harm deepens with the involvement of carceral systems like psychiatry and the police. Interventions such as forced medication, involuntary detention, welfare checks, and surveillance are justified as neutral or therapeutic responses to psychosis, but they are often unwanted and distressing. Many common psychiatric practices have been recognised by the UN as “forms of torture and ill-treatment” when they rely on coercion, confinement, or the removal of legal capacity. When a person’s distress is met with force, and when those around them collaborate with systems that deny their account of reality or conceal decisions being made about their body and freedom, trust is damaged. What is presented as care becomes indistinguishable from punishment. When a person is forcibly medicated, detained, or surveilled, is it really irrational for them to feel persecuted? And when you are persecuted, is the paranoid response to blame distant powers, or to look to the people, services, and systems that you trust, that are meant to care?

If we take the social model seriously, then psychosis cannot remain the exception that proves psychiatry’s authority. The social model asks us to locate distress not in defective minds, but in unequal, violent, and isolating conditions; to understand impairment as something produced through the interaction between people and their environments. It requires us to recognise that what is called ‘psychosis’ is often an attempt to make sense of real insecurity, injustice, and harm in a society that offers few collective explanations and even fewer routes to safety.

From this perspective, the harm associated with psychosis is not inevitable. The question then is not how to correct or contain psychotic beliefs, but how our responses either compound or relieve distress. Coercion, deception, and surveillance don’t restore trust or clarity; they deepen fear and confirm a sense of persecution. Likewise, drawing rigid boundaries between “sane” and “delusional” beliefs doesn’t protect people from distress, it simply determines whose interpretations of the world are taken seriously and whose are punished. A truly liberatory approach to psychosis is not force disguised as care. It asks that we build our communities, and create trust rather than dismissing distrust as madness, and in doing so strengthening the distrust and isolation felt. A truly liberatory approach to psychosis demands honesty, solidarity, and material change.

For more information and peer-led support for people with psychotic or similar experiences, visit the Hearing Voices Network

I have never been a religious or spiritual person, even though I grew up in a religious area and had friends (and strangers) throughout school and university trying to lure me into whatever prayer disguised as organised fun they were up to. I did try it out shortly for a desperate period when I was young, attempting to pray to a God I didn’t really believe in to make me not gay, but blessedly he never answered.

Despite my resistance to organised religion, I have always had a soft spot for nuns and their counterparts. The girlies.

This is probably partly due to pop culture, specifically Sister Act, but even more specifically Sister Act 2 (underrated). There are of course many real-life horror stories involving nuns and people in similar positions of power, but nuns and the nun-adjacent are often portrayed as the kinder and more reasonable arm of the patriarchal power structures of organised religion – groups of women dedicated to a higher cause and direct hands-on caring for their communities (except Sister Michael from Derry Girls).

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This topic has been top of mind recently, since discovering the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist Catholic order. I’m sure all of those words mean things, but I only know what I’ve seen on TikTok, which is that as part of their outreach, they’ve started a podcast. It’s just what God would want. The sisters themselves don’t have personal phones and don’t have anything to do with the production, they just get set up with microphones, and the rest is their gift of the gab. They talk about a variety of things, including what their lives look like.

In one moment that went viral, one sister talks about how she loves playing ultimate Frisbee back at the religion farm or wherever they live, and the other replies “Sister, and you are so good at that!” – a phrase that has taken off. They have gone viral, not just because they are religious sisters doing a podcast, which is like seeing a priest use a vape, but I think because of how calming they are, how sweet and unguarded, how simple their lives seem, and how they radiate genuine kindness. In a time that feels saturated with cruelty and hollowness, these qualities are especially magnetic.

In recent days, the US president, Donald Trump, has gotten into a spat with the literal Pope Leo, after the latter said in his prayers last week: “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life.” Using my decoding skills, I believe this was likely a reference to Trump and the war on Iran. In response, Trump called the pope “soft on crime”, a line I would have been proud to write as a satirical joke before the year 2017. The reality is that the big boss of the Catholic church, an institution I have a large amount of distaste for, and one that has been definitively not on the same “beliefs” page as me, is now the person in power making the most reasonable statements, or at the very least statements that sound recognisably human: that war and genocide is bad, that human life has value.

In recent months I have seen many lapsed Catholics speak jokingly(?) about how Leo is starting to reactivate their dormant Catholic sensibilities, as well as many non-Catholics sharing his words. To me this trend speaks more to morality than spirituality. It is a relief that someone in a powerful position is correctly identifying right and wrong. It is a relief to see Pope Leo decrying cruelty, because apparently most current world leaders lack the necessary spine. I am not going to become Catholic or religious at all, but with each passing day in this world filled with the despair of genocides, inhumane wars fought for oil, Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal of rich and powerful predators, generative AI dismantling our curiosity and tenacity, and the daily horror of what humans are capable of doing to each other, I feel myself turning towards something.

Of course there has always been human evil, but right now our species’ penchant for atrocity is palpable. It is gleeful, it is proud, it is brazen, it is spreading, it is bringing more stupid people along for the ride every minute.

It’s especially stark and shocking to see how much of this palpable evil comes from people who claim to be God-fearing. Watching those who pretend to be religious carry out the most wretched actions against others for power or money is enough to make me start thinking seriously about souls, something I haven’t done until now.

I think these people are soulless. They are empty. Hollow. Watching people get away with murder (often literally) is so difficult to swallow that it actually makes me hope the afterlife they profess to believe in is real. It would be appropriate for them to suffer in eternity for their actions. But right now on Earth, the psychic damage of watching them surge ahead has given rise to a strange new feeling in me. It’s not faith, but it’s a feeling that humans can be a great deal better than this.

I won’t ever get to a place of religion, but I find myself feeling more connected to other good people. It’s making me seek out people who care, who want to look after each other and Earth herself. This is not because I’m some hippy goodwill-to-all-creatures Ani DiFranco lesbian (although I love Ani DiFranco, am a lesbian and enjoy quite a few creatures). I am no Dominican Sister of Mary with a gentle nature, sweet thoughts and ultimate Frisbee skills. I want the world to be better, and I am angry at the people making it worse. I want them to face consequences, but none are forthcoming, so I find myself drawn into a powerful moral solidarity with other people, one that seems to resemble spirituality, a kind of non-religious faith in each other.

Those who can need to push back against the darkness – not to get into heaven or avoid hell, but because it’s the right thing to do. And Sister, you could be so good at that.