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Benchmarking LLM Agents on Meta-Analysis Articles from Nature Portfolio

Anzhe Xie, Weihang Su, Yujia Zhou, Yiqun Liu, Qingyao Ai · Jun 15, 2026 · Citations: 0

How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Validate the evaluation procedure and quality controls in the full paper before operational use.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Meta-analysis is a demanding form of evidence synthesis that combines literature retrieval, PI/ECO-guided study selection, and statistical aggregation. Its structured, verifiable workflow makes it an ideal substrate for evaluating systematic scientific reasoning, yet existing benchmarks lack ground truth across the full retrieval-screening-synthesis pipeline. We introduce MetaSyn, a dataset of 442 expert-curated meta-analyses from Nature Portfolio journals. Each entry pairs a research question with PI/ECO criteria, a retrieval corpus of 140k PubMed articles, verified positive studies, hard negatives that are topically similar but PI/ECO-ineligible, and complete search strategies and date bounds. Benchmarking twelve pipeline configurations (nine RAG variants and a protocol-driven agent) reveals a critical screening bottleneck: despite a retrieval ceiling of 90.9% recall at K=200, no system recovers more than 52.7% of ground-truth included literature. Current LLMs fail to reliably separate eligible studies from PI/ECO-failing distractors in pools of comparable topical relevance. Stage-attributed metrics capture where systems succeed and fail; a single end-to-end score does not.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

  • This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
  • The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.

Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 35%

What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Meta-analysis is a demanding form of evidence synthesis that combines literature retrieval, PI/ECO-guided study selection, and statistical aggregation."

Evaluation Modes

partial

Automatic Metrics

Includes extracted eval setup.

"Meta-analysis is a demanding form of evidence synthesis that combines literature retrieval, PI/ECO-guided study selection, and statistical aggregation."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Meta-analysis is a demanding form of evidence synthesis that combines literature retrieval, PI/ECO-guided study selection, and statistical aggregation."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Meta-analysis is a demanding form of evidence synthesis that combines literature retrieval, PI/ECO-guided study selection, and statistical aggregation."

Reported Metrics

partial

Recall, Recall@k, Relevance

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

"Benchmarking twelve pipeline configurations (nine RAG variants and a protocol-driven agent) reveals a critical screening bottleneck: despite a retrieval ceiling of 90.9% recall at K=200, no system recovers more than 52.7% of ground-truth included literature."

Rater Population

partial

Domain Experts

Helpful for staffing comparability.

"We introduce MetaSyn, a dataset of 442 expert-curated meta-analyses from Nature Portfolio journals."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Domain Experts
  • Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

recallrecall@krelevance

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Meta-analysis is a demanding form of evidence synthesis that combines literature retrieval, PI/ECO-guided study selection, and statistical aggregation.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • Meta-analysis is a demanding form of evidence synthesis that combines literature retrieval, PI/ECO-guided study selection, and statistical aggregation.
  • Its structured, verifiable workflow makes it an ideal substrate for evaluating systematic scientific reasoning, yet existing benchmarks lack ground truth across the full retrieval-screening-synthesis pipeline.
  • We introduce MetaSyn, a dataset of 442 expert-curated meta-analyses from Nature Portfolio journals.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • Its structured, verifiable workflow makes it an ideal substrate for evaluating systematic scientific reasoning, yet existing benchmarks lack ground truth across the full retrieval-screening-synthesis pipeline.
  • We introduce MetaSyn, a dataset of 442 expert-curated meta-analyses from Nature Portfolio journals.
  • Benchmarking twelve pipeline configurations (nine RAG variants and a protocol-driven agent) reveals a critical screening bottleneck: despite a retrieval ceiling of 90.9% recall at K=200, no system recovers more than 52.7% of ground-truth…

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Its structured, verifiable workflow makes it an ideal substrate for evaluating systematic scientific reasoning, yet existing benchmarks lack ground truth across the full retrieval-screening-synthesis pipeline.
  • Benchmarking twelve pipeline configurations (nine RAG variants and a protocol-driven agent) reveals a critical screening bottleneck: despite a retrieval ceiling of 90.9% recall at K=200, no system recovers more than 52.7% of ground-truth…

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: recall, recall@k, relevance

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

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