AI 造了个学术圈，40 万人被它反复拒稿
科学家用大模型造了一个虚拟学术界：4 万名研究者、8000 家机构，在 61 个平行世界里跑了几十年，模拟投稿、拒稿、改投、引用、拿经费、甚至退出学术圈。结果发现三件反常识的事：拒稿后改投会让审稿人的负担暴涨，远超人口增长本身；太保守的选题虽然稳，但长远看会牺牲话题多样性；而资源不平等可以凭空出现，根本不需要早期拿钱多的人滚雪球。这不是预测未来的水晶球，而是一个可控的实验室——现实里没法做对照实验，这里可以。它不会告诉你明天该投哪个期刊，但能帮政策制定者提前看到：如果审稿负担继续恶化、资源差距继续拉大，学术系统会走向哪里。
📄 原文摘要(英文)
Scientific progress emerges from a longitudinal ecosystem in which researchers, institutions, funding agencies, collaboration networks, and the scientific literature co-evolve. As AI becomes increasingly involved throughout the scientific research cycle, understanding these interconnected and evolving processes becomes increasingly important. We introduce SciUtopia, a persistent, closed-loop LLM-agent simulation framework for studying academic research ecosystems. SciUtopia models interconnected scientific processes such as research-direction choice, collaboration, submission, peer review, resubmission, citation, funding, and researcher attrition, while maintaining evolving states across simulated years. Its configurable institutional mechanisms and information channels provide a controlled testbed for matched counterfactual experiments and targeted interventions. Across 61 simulation worlds, SciUtopia simulates over 40,000 researchers from 8,000 institutions, producing around 400,000 publication decisions and 1.2 million LLM-generated peer reviews. Using these longitudinal simulations, we find that rejection-driven resubmission substantially amplifies reviewer burden beyond population growth alone, cautious exploration balances citation impact with career success and long-term topic diversity, and resource inequality can emerge even without detectable cumulative advantage from narrowly winning early funding. Code is available at https://github.com/Ahren09/ScienceUtopia.