"LLMs couldn't do any damage with hallucinated citations"

If you're saying stuff like this with a straight face then you are clearly not a scientist and you don't know what you're talking about. In 2021 there were maybe 10 papers with fictional citations. Even the publication mills at least linked to other junk papers. Now there are hundreds of thousands of papers with dishonest and useless bibliographies. This is because LLMs are an unbeatable force multiplier for dishonest and useless scientific work.

I am sure some legitimate academics are getting real use out of them. I am also sure that the net effect of LLMs on science is enormously negative, and it will take decades to fix the mess.