The 5 Systematic Failure Modes of AI Research Reports (and How to Catch Them)

AI research reports look authoritative. The numbers line up, the charts are clean, and every claim has a source citation.

But when you actually open those sources, things fall apart.

After analyzing dozens of AI-generated research reports, I found that LLMs don't fail randomly when doing research at scale. They fail in 5 predictable, repeatable ways — and once you know the patterns, you can catch them systematically.

Failure Mode #1: Unit and Scale Errors (HIGHEST PRIORITY)

What happens: Numbers lose or gain zeros due to unit misinterpretation.