{"paper":{"title":"Thinking Like a Scientist? A Structural Study of LLM-Generated Research Methods","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","cs.DL"],"primary_cat":"cs.CL","authors_text":"Andres Algaba, Brecht Verbeken, Francesca Carlon, Vincent Ginis","submitted_at":"2026-06-15T14:53:30Z","abstract_excerpt":"Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used to guide research methodology, yet their default methodological tendencies under minimal prompting remain unclear. Here, we prompt GPT-5.1, Gemini 3 Pro, and DeepSeek-V3.2 with an LLM-extracted research question from each of 1,000 recent arXiv computer-science papers and compare the resulting methodology suggestions against a paper-derived experimental inventory. Since we provide only the research question, the differences we measure reflect initial suggestions and not how optimal those suggestions are. We extract structured method features fr"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2606.26130","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2606.26130/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}