Every claim carries a name and a source

Researchers · Working with AI · July 2026

AI research tools hallucinate 17–33% of citations. You cannot stop a model inventing — you can make every claim traceable.

A per-source note: the claim, the verbatim quote, and the DOI on its own line — evidence you can walk back to.

Flagging, not fixing — either add the source or soften the claim.

Fabricated citations stopped being an anecdote and became a statistic: studies this year put AI research tools at 17 to 33 percent hallucinated references, and at least one major firm pulled a published report over invented sources. No 2026 model can be trusted on facts without verification — which means the workflow, not the model, has to carry the trust.

The workflow looks like this: claims live next to their evidence — a quote block and a source line in the same entry — and when a number appears that no linked paper contains, the agent flags it in a comment and fixes nothing. The human decides whether to add the source or soften the claim. The decision, either way, is on the record.

The money moment: the agent flags a number that appears in none of the linked papers — and fixes nothing. The owner replies, softens the claim, and marks the line retracted.

Distillation is where hallucinations usually hide, so the distillation admits its own uncertainty: a claim register graded solid, thin, and retracted, maintained like a ledger rather than an essay.

The claim register: what we actually know, graded solid, thin, and retracted — a distillation that admits its own uncertainty.

And because the register is versioned and every touch is signed, the audit trail answers the question peer review always asks: who changed this, and when. A softened claim is not a quiet cover-up; it is a visible correction.

The register's own audit trail: who touched it, when — softening included.

The model will still invent. The record no longer lets an invention survive unexamined — and that is the difference between a citation you hope is real and one you can walk back to its source.

The evidence queue: labels mark which notes are solid, which are thin, and which still need a source.