Claude Opus 4.8 Generates Academic Paper From Archived Research Files
Opus 4.8 formulated the hypotheses in advance, conducting data cleaning, did research on references, conducted analyses, did robustness checks, and put out the whole paper in LaTEX style.
GPT-5.5 found one issue with a hallucinated result, and had other constructive feedback.
Ethan Mollick@emollickI had Opus 4.8 in Claude Code write a sophisticated, if minor, academic paper from a archive of hundreds of de-identified research files from years ago I had to use GPT-5.5 Pro as a reviewer, it spotted one major error & some minor points. Opus corrected https://embeddedness-gradient.netlify.app/
#175Ethan Mollick@EMOLLICKClaude really can roleplay an economist. I love this little comment Claude made after some robustness checks on the paper it wrote: "On a 1–10 identification scale, I'd now put the paper at about 4.5 — better than the 3.5 I'd have given before these tests, but well short of quasi-experimental (~7). The framing "conditional association consistent with…" is still the right calibration. I shouldn't claim causal identification."
Ethan Mollick@emollickI had Opus 4.8 in Claude Code write a sophisticated, if minor, academic paper from a archive of hundreds of de-identified research files from years ago I had to use GPT-5.5 Pro as a reviewer, it spotted one major error & some minor points. Opus corrected https://embeddedness-gradient.netlify.app/