@jamesmarshall @docpop no, we don't make up fake citations. But also sadly, not every co-author checks every citation. We rely on trusting our co-authors to not commit academic fraud.

I'm very in favor of verifiable academic fraud leading to (impermanent) bans from preprint servers. If your co-authors are committing fraud and you find out by getting banned from a preprint server, that sucks, but it's a great signal to stop trusting that co-author. Nature will heal.