Year: 2024
Type: preprint
Abstract: Evaluating modern ML models is hard. The strong incentive for researchers and companies to report a state-of-the-art result on some metric often leads to questionable research practices (QRPs): bad practices which fall short of outright research fraud. We describe 44 such practices which can undermine reported results, giving examples where possible. Our list emphasises the evaluation of large language models (LLMs) on public benchmarks. We also discuss "irreproducible research practices", i.e. decisions that make it difficult or impossible for other researchers to reproduce, build on or audit previous research.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Leech, Gavin, Vazquez, Juan J., Kupper, Niclas, Yagudin, Misha, Aitchison, Laurence
Institutions: University of Bath, University of Bristol
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: UK Research and Innovation
Award: G49701852
OpenAlex ID: W4403749567