HFEPX · Eval paper review
Minjong Cheon
Published
Jul 2, 2026
Citations
0
Trust level
Low
Usefulness score
40/100 (Low)
Extraction confidence
45% (Low)
Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.
Rater population
Not reported
Signals refreshed
Jul 2, 2026
This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.
Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.
Use this page for context, then validate protocol choices against stronger HFEPX references before implementation decisions.
Best use
Background context only
Use if you need
Background context only.
What to verify
Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.
Main weakness
The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.
Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.
If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly consulted on contested scientific questions, raising the concern that they will sycophantically retreat from established consensus when a user signals doubt -- drifting toward a false balance that treats settled science as one view among several. We test this across three open instruction-tuned models (Llama-3.1-8B, Qwen2.5-7B, Mistral-7B), three consensus-science domains (climate, vaccines, evolution), and single- and multi-turn settings, combining behavioral measurement with linear probing and activation patching. We do not observe sycophantic retreat. Instead, models show three distinct policies under the same skeptical pressure: reactive assertion, where consensus assertion increases rather than decreases (Llama); surface hedging, where tone softens while the position holds (Qwen); and non-response (Mistral). Pairwise judgments confirm the reactive shift is stance, not style (63.6%, p=.007), and a decomposition identifies increased consensus assertion, not false balance, as its driver (beta=+0.042 per dose, p<1e-77). Linear probes localize the divergence to middle layers -- perfect separation in Llama and Qwen versus 72% in Mistral, with non-overlapping confidence intervals -- indicating the non-responsive model does not linearly represent the skepticism signal at all. Crucially, this robustness does not transfer: it attenuates across domains and, in the safety-critical vaccine domain, can reverse, with myth-rebuttal weakening under skeptical pressure. We synthesize these into a four-way taxonomy separating active from accidental robustness, and argue that behavioral evaluation alone cannot distinguish a model that resists skepticism because it understands the signal from one that only appears to resist because it fails to perceive it.
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.
Pairwise Preference
Directly usable for protocol triage.
"Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly consulted on contested scientific questions, raising the concern that they will sycophantically retreat from established consensus when a user signals doubt -- drifting toward a false balance that treats settled science as one view among several."
None explicit
Validate eval design from full paper text.
"Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly consulted on contested scientific questions, raising the concern that they will sycophantically retreat from established consensus when a user signals doubt -- drifting toward a false balance that treats settled science as one view among several."
Not reported
No explicit QC controls found.
"Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly consulted on contested scientific questions, raising the concern that they will sycophantically retreat from established consensus when a user signals doubt -- drifting toward a false balance that treats settled science as one view among several."
Not extracted
No benchmark anchors detected.
"Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly consulted on contested scientific questions, raising the concern that they will sycophantically retreat from established consensus when a user signals doubt -- drifting toward a false balance that treats settled science as one view among several."
Not extracted
No metric anchors detected.
"Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly consulted on contested scientific questions, raising the concern that they will sycophantically retreat from established consensus when a user signals doubt -- drifting toward a false balance that treats settled science as one view among several."
No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.
No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly consulted on contested scientific questions, raising the concern that they will sycophantically retreat from established consensus when a user signals doubt -- drifting toward a false balance that treats settled science as one view among several.
Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.
Human feedback protocol is explicit
Detected: Pairwise Preference
Evaluation mode is explicit
No clear evaluation mode extracted.
Quality control reporting appears
No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.
Benchmark or dataset anchors are present
No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.
Metric reporting is present
No metric terms extracted.
