A Last-Minute Score Drop at ICML Raises Questions About Review Integrity

What the score drop exposes is not a single bad actor but a process architecture with no audit trail for score changes made after rebuttal closes. The researcher who reported the incident could observe the change and ask whether it was driven by Area Chair pressure ^[1] — but the system provides no channel to find out. That opacity is load-bearing: it protects the process from challenges, but it also protects conduct that the process cannot distinguish from misconduct. ICML 2026 compounded this by creating that…