Evidence record

Research outcome prediction

1,585 later-paper idea pairs · Unadapted GPT-4.1, Table 4 baseline · 2025-06-01

Reported result · numeric

51.4%

Pairwise research-outcome prediction accuracy · percent

benchmark author reported · extraction review: agent checked

Sources

Published 2025-06-01

Evaluation setup
splitPublished-paper test after GPT-4.1 cutoff
task count1585
task snapshotSource paper arXiv:2506.00794v1; GPT-4.1 pre/post 1 June 2024 cutoff as applicable
attempts per task2
selection rulePredict both idea orders; count inconsistent answers incorrect
aggregate methodPercent correct on eligible idea pairs
tool accessPaper retrieval agent, before-cutoff literature only
filteringSame-paper idea pairs; at least three benchmarks; ties removed
scaffoldUnadapted GPT-4.1 Table 4 baseline; retrieval configuration not fully specified
contamination concernsRetrieval limited to papers dated before 1 June 2024
comparability caveatsTable 4 prints 51.4%; Figure 3 accompanying prose separately says 51.9%. Exact configuration relationship is not reported, so the two are not averaged.

Not reported: run count, token budget, wall clock budget, hardware, training budget, inference budget, monetary cost, internet access, evaluator version, human intervention, task exclusions.

Comparability

Not compared with other results.

Limitations

  • Paper prose beside Figure 3 separately reports 51.9% for GPT-4.1; configuration relationship is not explained, so this table-specific 51.4% is not averaged with it.
  • Prediction is not autonomous idea generation, experimental execution or recursive self-improvement.
  • The human comparator covers a separate 45-pair NLP subset, not the full 1,585-pair test.