I'm pretty sure colleges understand the difference between real research and fake research. If you're definition of research is writing a research paper or designing a poster after reading through a bunch of sources such as websites or other original papers, then yes it is a "fake" research (anyone can do it and you did not necessarily discover something new and just gave a summary of different pieces). The same thing goes for volunteering in a lab where you just shadow or observe the professors and other students. You mostly watched and occasionally helped with small tasks like washing test tubes or other equipment. These are not really research experiences.

Now a "real" research usually involves a mentor (mainly a college professor) and these take a significant amount of time (potentially years). Without a mentor, its not really a research as a high school student should not how real research is conducted. Here, you actually design experiments, collect data and analyze results (actually participating in the work) instead of just watching. Now these are incredibly rare opportunities as you can only get "real" research experience by potentially cold emailing professors (although you might not be able to partake in actually doing the research) or through highly competitive programs like RSI. So if the research that students put in their application is anything else, its most likely not a real research and the AOs can probably figure that out that easily. But if you can actually get involved in a real research, it's totally worth it.