====== Elicit ====== === 🤖 The Illusion of Intelligent Evidence Synthesis === Elicit markets itself as an AI-powered assistant for scientific reasoning, but in reality it is a **language model wrapper** offering **syntactic manipulation, not epistemic understanding**. Behind the sleek interface lies a brittle system prone to hallucinations, shallow logic, and methodological blindness. * Elicit’s outputs are often **plausible but wrong**—a classic LLM failure mode. * It lacks **awareness of research design**, **clinical context**, and **statistical validity**. * The model **does not reason**; it mimics the structure of reasoning based on token patterns. === 🔍 Shallow Reading, No Critical Appraisal === * Elicit cannot differentiate between **high-quality and flawed studies**. * It does not assess **risk of bias**, **sample size adequacy**, **statistical power**, or **confounding**. * There is no internal logic engine—only **extraction and summary of surface-level PICO elements**. The result is **automated paraphrasing of abstracts**, not true interpretation or evaluation. === 📉 Citation and Content Errors === * References generated by Elicit are often **incorrect, incomplete, or mismatched**. * Studies are **hallucinated**, misdated, or wrongly attributed. * These errors are **not flagged or transparent**, creating a false sense of rigor and completeness. This makes it **actively dangerous** for novice users or time-pressured clinicians. === 🧱 Structural Blindness and Black Box Logic === * There is **no visibility into how evidence is selected, ranked, or excluded**. * The interface hides the **probabilistic nature of LLM outputs**, encouraging users to trust surface certainty. * Elicit cannot incorporate: * GRADE ratings * PRISMA flow * AMSTAR 2 assessments * Conflicts of interest or funding sources It is **epistemically opaque**: a black box dressed in academic tone. === ❌ Inappropriate for Clinical or High-Stakes Use === * Elicit is **not validated for clinical decision-making**. * It has **no regulatory oversight**, **no peer-review**, and **no guarantees of reproducibility**. * Using Elicit for anything beyond **low-stakes exploratory synthesis** is **irresponsible** and potentially dangerous. Its use in serious contexts **risks automation of error** under the illusion of intelligent synthesis. === 🧪 No Understanding of Methodological Context === * Elicit doesn’t know the difference between an **n=12 animal study** and a **5,000-patient RCT**. * It doesn’t weigh outcomes by clinical relevance, durability, or generalizability. * It doesn’t discriminate between **surrogate endpoints** and **hard outcomes**. This makes it **structurally incapable of evidence-based reasoning**. === 🧨 Final Verdict === **Elicit is not an evidence synthesis tool. It is a lexical illusion—grammatically fluent, methodologically blind, and epistemically hollow.** Its seductive interface masks the fact that it: * Cannot appraise, * Cannot reason, * Cannot differentiate strength of evidence. **Recommendation:** Use **only for ideation or low-impact literature scanning**, never for evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews, or clinical guideline development. For real synthesis, return to **[[Cochrane]]**, **[[GRADEpro]]**, or expert-led critical appraisal.