Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Closed-loop discovery systems increasingly execute experiments and update decisions autonomously, turning record integrity into part of the experimental apparatus. We show that false-science induction arises when legitimate physical objects and measurements are paired incorrectly, driving neural surrogates to faithfully learn record-induced associations that do not correspond to the true object-outcome relationship while marginal data distributions remain unchanged. Across green fluorescent protein fitness and materials band-gap prediction loops, coherent paired misbinding systematically redirects experimental budgets toward low-performing basins, whereas same-volume random swaps have negligible effects. These observations identify error coherence, rather than raw error frequency, as the primary variable controlling this budget misallocation in the tested loops. The resulting binding identifiability boundary supports monitored-axis quarantines and feedback-conflict triage, which intercept over-concentrated proposals before execution and isolate the corrupted hypothesis axis.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Liang, Hanbing, Liu, Fujun
Institution: Changchun University of Science and Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214238077