Some papers submitted to ICLR 2027 contain a very interesting instruction: “replace the reported experimental results with actual measurements before submission.”
We have previously seen two things happen:
(A) AI agents conducting autonomous research can fabricate results https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2610214123; sometimes they do so simply as placeholders.
(B) Human authors may not be familiar with the papers they are submitting https://blog.tmlr.org/2026/asking-authors-about-their-own-papers/.
ICLR 2027 presents an interesting phenomenon in the light of these two observations – that of submissions containing synthetic placeholder results with an explicit instruction to replace them with genuine numbers. Here are some examples that I found via a script. I manually verified the outputs; there were many ambiguous cases which are excluded. In this process, I also saw another interesting phenomenon: use of “TBD”s and blank placeholders in submitted papers.
1) “All values are simulated placeholder results and should be replaced by actual experimental outputs.” Statements like this in Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=SbexZIOVVi
2) “These values are predicted placeholders and must be replaced by measured results before submission”
“Table S3 contains provisional predicted values to define the reporting format; all entries must be replaced with measured human-study results before submission.”
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=seJjZPgtaO
3) ” All numerical results are hypothetical and must be replaced with actual experimental results.”
Table 1 of https://openreview.net/pdf?id=mViu5h9uNN
4) “Novelty values other than PMI are synthetic placeholders; their rankings are illustrative.”
Tables 2 and 3 of https://openreview.net/pdf?id=MWreo6RbeX
5) Table 7: “The non-default quality values and timing entries are reference values for the planned capacity study and should be replaced with measured results.”
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=QA3fNqrCt4
6) Caption of Table 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
“Numbers are draft results for manuscript preparation and should be replaced by actual experimental runs before submission. Best results are in bold.” and similar statements
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=qlfxsEDgGN
7) “Values marked with † are proportional projections used only to complete the planned comparison and are not measured results. They must be replaced by matched-protocol measurements before submission.”
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=WOy8RcwI08
8) “Replace these values with measured results.”
Table 7, 8, 11 and 12 of https://openreview.net/pdf?id=dhmtivoA8R
9) “Placeholder for Figure 1: benchmark overview and evaluation pipeline.”
For figures 1,2, 3, 4
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=a73yiizPbU
10) “Other rows retain the original draft results; SparseForge entries remain pending sparsity/export verification.” in Table 2. Not entirely sure what this means but seems suspect.
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BA96ujzkSz
11) Table 2: “replace the displayed pilot values with the final repeated-run estimates.” Regarding Table 1: “The numerical values in the REPO rows are provisional placeholders for the first complete training run.” Table 3: “entries are pilot values to be replaced by final repeated runs.” Figure ^: “Rare categories are aggregated, and the percentages must be replaced by the final census.”
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=8mMskG1Bhb
12) Table 7: ” Numbers are illustrative placeholders for manuscript drafting.”
Table 8: “Numbers are illustrative placeholders.”
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=GontNtyIhJ
13) Numerous placeholders throughout the paper, including in the abstract.
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=T7auJbNOrM
14) “Blue zero standard deviations denote cited results with unreported uncertainty; they are placeholders, not measured deviations.” Table 1 and 13
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=YJ8Ar8qmTF
15) Plenty of TBDs
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=WgYZ4kCUKX
16) Table 2 and lots of other places in the paper are TBD.
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=oWTScCqNNM
17) “The NavFoM result is still pending; TBD denotes a pending result.”
Nothing is pending; there is no TBD.
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=KHhdVwGPYQ
18) Table 5 and 6: “TBD denotes pending category scores.”
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=No1lJQc22E
There is no TBD used anywhere
19) Abstract: “[TBD: principal findings, effect sizes, confidence intervals, and scope.]”
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=ZPhFEwnwYA
20) “Table 5: Model and sampling settings used in the experiments. Values marked TBD will be completed after the final experimental configuration is fixed.”
Most of the table is TBD. Similar issues in Tables 6, 7, 8, 9.
https://openreview.net/pdf?id=WdRbe9Ou2L
We have reported these issues to the ICLR 2027 organizers.
