Epistemic compression in large language model explanations of the gut–liver axis
LLM explanations of the gut-liver axis are susceptible to epistemic compression driven by narrative fluency rather than factual error. Readability does not reliably indicate epistemic robustness in decision-adjacent contexts. These findings support shifting evaluation and governance from platform comparison toward concept-conditioned requirement engineering that enforces provenance, calibrated uncertainty, and explicit separation of correlation, mechanism, and actionability as generative outputs approach clinical relevance.
Authors
- Meng Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2024-2923)
- Yilin Che
- Jie Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3435-0351)
- Huan Zhou
- Dan Zang
Institutions
- Dalian Medical University (CN)
- Second Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology
- Published
- 2026-02-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fcimb.2026.1773593
- Primary Topic
- Gut microbiota and health
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China