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In this work, we focus on two areas of potential concern for AI-supported research efforts. First, we describe the production of large numbers of formulaic single-factor analyses, relating single predictors to specific health conditions, where multifactorial approaches would be more appropriate. Employing AI-supported single-factor approaches removes context from research, fails to capture interactions, avoids false discovery correction, and is an approach that can easily be adopted by paper mills. Second, we identify risks of selective data usage, such as analyzing limited date ranges or cohort subsets without clear justification, suggestive of data dredging, and post-hoc hypothesis formation. Using a systematic literature search for single-factor analyses, we identified 341 NHANES-derived research papers published over the past decade, each proposing an association between a predictor and a health condition from the wide range contained within NHANES. We found evidence that research failed to take account of multifactorial relationships, that manuscripts did not account for the risks of false discoveries, and that researchers selectively extracted data from NHANES rather than utilizing the full range of data available. Given the explosion of AI-assisted productivity in published manuscripts (the systematic search strategy used here identified an average of 4 papers per annum from 2014 to 2021, but 190 in 2024\u20139 October alone), we highlight a set of best practices to address these concerns, aimed at researchers, data controllers, publishers, and peer reviewers, to encourage improved statistical practices and mitigate the risks of paper mills using AI-assisted workflows to introduce low-quality manuscripts to the scientific literature.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pbio.3003152","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,8]],"date-time":"2025-05-08T17:22:51Z","timestamp":1746724971000},"page":"e3003152","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pbio.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":97,"title":["Explosion of formulaic research articles, including inappropriate study designs and false discoveries, based on the NHANES US national health database"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"23","author":[{"given":"Tulsi","family":"Suchak","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Anietie E.","family":"Aliu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Charlie","family":"Harrison","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Reyer","family":"Zwiggelaar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Nophar","family":"Geifman","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9417-6511","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Matt","family":"Spick","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,8]]},"reference":[{"issue":"11","key":"pbio.3003152.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e3002931","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pbio.3002931","article-title":"A call for research to address the threat of paper mills","volume":"22","author":"JA Byrne","year":"2024","journal-title":"PLoS Biol"},{"key":"pbio.3003152.ref002","year":"2024"},{"key":"pbio.3003152.ref003","first-page":"2024.10.23.619844","article-title":"AI-readiness for biomedical data: bridge2ai recommendations","author":"T Clark","year":"2024","journal-title":"bioRxiv"},{"key":"pbio.3003152.ref004","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"baae028","DOI":"10.1093\/database\/baae028","article-title":"nhanesA: achieving transparency and reproducibility in NHANES research","author":"L Ale","year":"2024","journal-title":"Database (Oxford)"},{"key":"pbio.3003152.ref005","author":"H Susmann","year":"2016"},{"key":"pbio.3003152.ref006","article-title":"NHANES-pyTOOL-API\/README.md at main kkrusere\/NHANES-pyTOOL-API."},{"key":"pbio.3003152.ref007","unstructured":"nhanes-dl: a python library for downloading continous NHANES data into panda dataframes."},{"key":"pbio.3003152.ref008"},{"issue":"1","key":"pbio.3003152.ref009","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"604","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-023-36231-7","article-title":"Atlas of plasma NMR biomarkers for health and disease in 118,461 individuals from the UK Biobank","volume":"14","author":"H Julkunen","year":"2023","journal-title":"Nat Commun"},{"issue":"3","key":"pbio.3003152.ref010","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"196","DOI":"10.1207\/s15327957pspr0203_4","article-title":"HARKing: hypothesizing after the results are known","volume":"2","author":"NL Kerr","year":"1998","journal-title":"Pers Soc Psychol Rev"},{"issue":"4","key":"pbio.3003152.ref011","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"308","DOI":"10.1037\/gpr0000128","article-title":"When Does HARKing hurt? 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