Without example in- and output or at least more detailed descriptions of the actual experiments, it's hard to judge the value of the research. It's (unfortunately very) easy to write a system that spews out grammatically correct but otherwise incoherent sentences, a large part of NLP is about this precise problem. I'd like to know more about how the structure of the sentences by DISCERN match that of schizophrenic utterances.
"You can't really prove anything with a computer model like this,"<p>Indeed, the behavior the article describes sounds like a normal failure mode for a natural language processing computer program, "spewing out a jumble of grammatically correct yet disassociated sentences".
Interestingly enough, this seems to also explain why schizophrenics tend to self-medicate with cigarettes and why smoking tends to increase focus in non-schizophrenics (nicotine increases dopamine levels in the brain).<p><i>Edit: I misunderstood, schizophrenia seems to be caused by an elevated dopamine level, not a deficiency.</i>
If their theory is correct then the researchers have basically proved the inevitability of SKYNET. When the Internet becomes self aware (able parse and understand itself) its inability to forget will cause it to become schizophrenic and start issuing terrorist threats against humans.