Claim LD09-SL-C01 (v1.0)
In 41.3 million natural-science papers (1980–2025), researchers who used AI as a research method published 3.02 times as many papers a year, received 4.84 times as many citations and became research project leaders 1.37 years sooner than researchers who did not.
Provenance and status
- Claim type
- ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
- Publication status
- ELIGIBLE (STRONG_SCOPE) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH STRONG SCOPE QUALIFIER”)
- Verification state
- CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (as printed: “CONTENT VERIFIED”; verified by: UNKNOWN)
- Does not license
- A causal effect of adopting AI, a within-person change, or any statement about the social sciences or about chat assistants
- Source (field 6, as printed)
- Hao, Xu, Li & Evans, “Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus,” Nature, 2026
- Source type (field 7)
- PEER_REVIEWED_JOURNAL_ARTICLE (as printed: “Peer-reviewed journal article”)
- Institutional position
- Independent academic (Tsinghua University, University of Chicago, Zhongguancun Academy and Santa Fe Institute)
- Maturity (claim evidence / publication maturity)
- EMERGING (as printed: “EMERGING”)
- Recorded date
- 2026-10-15
- Currentness / correction
- This is the current version. No correction or concern relation is recorded on its Sources.
Version
Pinned version v1.0 (entry LD09-SL-C01--v1.0) — this page never floats to newer evidence.
This pinned version is also the current version.
Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)
- “Hao, Xu, Li & Evans, “Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus,” Nature, 2026” → SRC-SL-HAO-XU-LI-EVANS-NATURE-2026--v1.0 — Hao, Xu, Li & Evans, “Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus,” Nature, 2026; class PEER_REVIEWED_JOURNAL_ARTICLE (explicit public provenance pin)
All 25 canonical Claim fields (raw values and normalized values)
| # | Canonical field | Canonical value (verbatim) | Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CLAIM ID | LD09-SL-C01 | — |
| 2 | PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM | In 41.3 million natural-science papers (1980–2025), researchers who used AI as a research method published 3.02 times as many papers a year, received 4.84 times as many citations and became research project leaders 1.37 years sooner than researchers who did not. | — |
| 3 | CLAIM TYPE | ESTIMATE | base_types: ESTIMATE |
| 4 | RESEARCH STRAND | A — Science and scholarship | — |
| 5 | MATURITY | EMERGING | states: EMERGING |
| 6 | SOURCE | Hao, Xu, Li & Evans, “Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus,” Nature, 2026 | source_ids: SRC-SL-HAO-XU-LI-EVANS-NATURE-2026 |
| 7 | SOURCE TYPE | Peer-reviewed journal article | classes: PEER_REVIEWED_JOURNAL_ARTICLE |
| 8 | INSTITUTIONAL POSITION | Independent academic (Tsinghua University, University of Chicago, Zhongguancun Academy and Santa Fe Institute) | — |
| 9 | SCOPE | Biology, medicine, chemistry, physics, materials science and geology; computer science, mathematics and the social sciences excluded | — |
| 10 | DESIGN | Bibliometric comparison of adopters and non-adopters; a fine-tuned language model classifies papers as AI-augmented from title and abstract | — |
| 11 | SAMPLE / DATASET | 41.3 million English-language OpenAlex papers; 310,957 (0.75%) classified as AI-augmented | — |
| 12 | MODEL / TOOL / VERSION | AI as a research method, mostly machine learning and deep learning (for example support vector machines and neural networks); not the use of chat assistants for writing | — |
| 13 | COMPARATOR | Researchers in the same disciplines who did not publish AI-augmented work | — |
| 14 | MAIN RESULT | 3.02 times the annual papers; 4.84 times the annual citations; transition to research project leader 1.37 years sooner; classifier F1 0.875 against expert labels | — |
| 15 | INFERENTIAL TARGET | Career advantages associated with publishing AI-augmented research in the natural sciences | — |
| 16 | DOES NOT LICENSE | A causal effect of adopting AI, a within-person change, or any statement about the social sciences or about chat assistants | — |
| 17 | VERIFICATION STATE | CONTENT VERIFIED | state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · verified_by: UNKNOWN |
| 18 | LIMITATIONS | The authors state they “cannot fully identify the causal linkage between AI adoption and scientific impact”; adopters and non-adopters differ in ways the comparison does not remove; a matched-cohort check in the preprint’s supplement (arXiv version 4; the journal supplement was not read) reports much smaller gaps by career year 10 (24.45% more citations, 9.61% more output); the first preprint version reported different headline numbers | — |
| 19 | CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES | Field-level contraction in the same study: LD09-SL-C02; LLM-era output gains: LD09-SL-C05 | — |
| 20 | GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE | Global / English | — |
| 21 | DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER | The study cannot say which researchers adopt AI; adoption tracks data-rich fields | — |
| 22 | R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS | LD-09, D3 | — |
| 23 | WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM? | A causal design (for example staggered access to AI tools) or a replication that includes the social sciences and chat-assistant use | — |
| 24 | PUBLICATION STATUS | ELIGIBLE WITH STRONG SCOPE QUALIFIER | state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: STRONG_SCOPE |
| 25 | RECORDED DATE | 2026-10-15 | — |
Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-09 (LIVING_DEBATE); D3 (DOMAIN)
Cited by Living Debate versions
Research-of-record provenance
Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 cb07f92d739f86832b3094a07ee111f86afaa3a4ccb777ff8d838784b485138d.
Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)
- SocioLens claim — LD09-SL-C01 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-15; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 15 October 2026 to build the LD-09 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-09 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 01 — LD09-SL-C01” SHA-256
4a7b00c019fba9bfb826f45fa0a438e01d17543d5ff0103afa1d746a3d43251e; fixturefixtures/authored/claims/LD09-SL-C01--v1.0.
Builder decisions (not Drive data)
- VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD09-SL-C01 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-09 debate
- CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD09-SL-C01 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-15); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 15 October 2026 to build the LD-09 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-09 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts
- FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-HAO-XU-LI-EVANS-NATURE-2026--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 01 — LD09-SL-C01 cites "Hao, Xu, Li & Evans, “Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus,” Nature, 2026"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
- SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-HAO-XU-LI-EVANS-NATURE-2026--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Hao, Xu, Li & Evans, “Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus,” Nature, 2026".