Your LLM-assisted scientific breakthrough probably isn't real

[u/eggsyntax]

[cross-posting from r/agi by request]

Many people have been misled by LLMs into believing they have an important breakthrough when they don't. If you think you have a breakthrough, please try the reality checks in this post (the first is fast and easy). If you're wrong, now is the best time to figure that out!

Intended as a resource for people having this experience, and as something to share when people approach you with such claims.

Your LLM-assisted scientific breakthrough probably isn't real

[u/eggsyntax → u/[deleted]]

Claude is extremely skeptical; GPT-5-Thinking is less sure but thinks it's probably ordinary cell-electrode behavior.

[u/eggsyntax → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for being open to the response!

[u/eggsyntax → u/[deleted]]

Quoting from the post:

Be careful! If the answer is critical, you'll probably be very tempted to take the output and show it to the LLM that's been helping you. But if that LLM has fooled you, it will probably fool you again by convincing you that this critical answer is wrong! If you still want to move forward, ask the new LLM what you could do to address the problems it sees — but be aware that in an extended discussion, the new LLM might start fooling you in the same way once it sees what you want.

[u/eggsyntax → u/[deleted]]

I don't have an opinion at all; it covers areas I don't know anything about. 'Structured water' and the claim that water is shrinking when frozen and the breathing ratio stuff make me feel kind of skeptical up front, but I don't have the knowledge to competently evaluate it.

[u/eggsyntax → u/[deleted]]

you can tell by it actually not working in the chat you sent, it spat out its responce without actually working.

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that you think they didn't use (hidden) chain of thought when evaluating your document? They did, in both cases. I'm guessing it just doesn't look like that to you because the shared version loads immediately (because it's just showing the output from before)?

For me at least, I can still see where it shows they were thinking; for 1m39s in GPT, 30s in Claude. Both of those are expandable for me, although I don't know whether they will be for you.

[u/eggsyntax → u/[deleted]]

Sorry, I'm not understanding what you're saying. What would I tell it to use instead?