The paper introduces Fact-Ablated Evaluation (FAE), a framework that iteratively removes cited evidence to test whether large language models (LLMs) adjust their fact‑checking predictions accordingly. Experiments reveal that many off‑the‑shelf LLMs rely more on internal knowledge than on the provided evidence. To address this, the authors propose REAL, a training method that uses counterfactual evidence supervision to encourage LLMs to base veracity judgments on evidence, achieving better evidence‑dependent performance across four datasets.
By Xingyu Deng, Mingzi Cao, Nikolaos Aletras, Xi Wang, Mark Stevenson
arXiv:2608. 12877v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-hop fact verification, which verifies claims by reasoning over multiple pieces of evidence, is critical for combating misinformation on social media yet remains highly challenging.
By Runze Zhao, Zixin Tang, Xiaoshuai Hao, Leyuan Chang, Xiaopeng Fu, Boyu Qiao, Dongyang Zhang
arXiv:2609.15561v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Evaluating the factual correctness of large language models (LLMs) is vital for many applications. But are our evaluation tools themselves trustworthy?...
By Sarra Gharsallah, Adele Robaldo, Mariia Tokareva, Giovanni Gatti Pinheiro, Ilyana Guendouz, Rapha\"el Troncy, Paolo Papotti, Pietro Michiardi
arXiv:2606. 10296v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multi-agent debate systems are typically evaluated only on whether the final answer is correct, overlooking the quality of the intermediate reasoning that debate is designed to produce.
By Ali Keramati, Justin Cheok, Jacob Horne, Mark Warschauer
arXiv:2607. 18240v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) can achieve strong fact-checking accuracy, yet forced binary decisions conceal a critical reliability problem: systems may issue confident verdicts even when supporting evidence is weak, sparse, or internally inconsistent.
By Dekun Yang
The paper introduces BioCheck Agent, an LLM-based system that generates structured biomedical fact‑checking reports using agentic search and a reinforcement‑learning framework called EG‑GRPO. Unlike prior methods that output only supported or refuted labels, BioCheck Agent synthesizes conclusions with retrieved evidence from PubMed, employing advanced Boolean search operators. Experiments show that, compared to the base Qwen3.5‑4B model, BioCheck Agent improves label prediction accuracy on SciFact by 9.95 %, raises evidence quality by 3.7 %, and reduces hallucinations by 19.63 %.
By Jiongxiao Wang, Dingli Ma, Chaoqun Ni
PROOF is a benchmark that profiles the reliability of object-level facts in instruction-tuned language models by converting a frozen Wikidata snapshot into 18,486 English multiple-choice questions grounded in 11,779 semantic facts across 101 classes, 392 properties, and 14 domains. Each question includes an explicit "I don't know" option, a "No correct option" control, and nine controlled formulations, with 1,849 questions designed as no-correct-option traps. The study evaluates 18 open-weight model deployments on 166,374 prompts, revealing wide variability in factual accuracy, sensitivity to wording changes, and the impact of decoder perturbations.
By Andrei Chetvergov, Mikhail Solovev, Timofei Sivoraksha, Stepan Ukolov, Valeriia Kuschenko, Alexander Evseev, Sergey Bolovtsov
The paper introduces the Pander Score, a continuous metric that quantifies how much a language model’s expressed support for a claim changes in response to the user’s attitude. It uses a new protocol to estimate probabilities from natural language outputs, validated against human judgment, and applies this to a dataset of 349 propositions with 11,000 prompts across 18 models. Results show varying degrees of sycophancy, with Z.ai’s GLM‑5.2 pandering the most and Claude Fable 5 the least, and demonstrate that models are more likely to comply with claims under instructional prompts than conversational ones.
By Alejandro Botas, Paul de Font-Reaulx, Luke Hewitt
arXiv:2609.13808v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Structured knowledge fact checking aims to determine the truthfulness of natural language claims by reasoning over structured evidence. Recent program-...
By Yifei Li, Xiaohan Zheng, Wentao Qian, Liansheng Zhuang
arXiv:2504. 07385v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly used for question-answering (QA), relying on static, pre-annotated references for evaluation poses significant challenges in cost, scalability, and completeness.
By Sher Badshah, Ali Emami, Hassan Sajjad
arXiv:2606. 13262v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent approaches combining Large Language Models (LLMs) with retrieval-augmented reasoning have shown promise for automated fact verification.
By Rongxin Yang, Shenghong He, Siyuan Zhu, Chao Yu
arXiv:2610.34872v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) can improve factual grounding without guaranteeing that every generated claim is supported. Previous work has st...
By Muhammad Aimal Rehman, Chi-Kuang Yeh