Q002 — Sycophancy Warnings — Self-Audit¶
Domain 1 — Eligibility Criteria¶
| Criterion | Rating |
|---|---|
| Were inclusion/exclusion criteria pre-specified? | Low risk |
| Were criteria applied consistently? | Low risk |
| Were borderline cases documented? | Low risk |
Notes: Sources were selected based on direct relevance to sycophancy, automation bias, and overtrust in AI training contexts. Both training-content sources and research-about-the-phenomenon sources were included to enable comparison.
Domain 2 — Search Comprehensiveness¶
| Criterion | Rating |
|---|---|
| Were multiple sources/databases searched? | Low risk |
| Were search terms comprehensive? | Low risk |
| Were non-English sources considered? | High risk |
Notes: The query specified multiple search terms (sycophancy, automation bias, overtrust, overreliance, confirmation reinforcement, acquiescence). All were used. Non-English training materials were not examined.
Domain 3 — Evaluation Consistency¶
| Criterion | Rating |
|---|---|
| Were all sources evaluated using the same criteria? | Low risk |
| Were ratings applied consistently? | Low risk |
| Were COI assessments performed? | Low risk |
Notes: COI identified for commercial sources and OpenAI's self-reporting on its own product failure.
Domain 4 — Synthesis Fairness¶
| Criterion | Rating |
|---|---|
| Were all hypotheses given fair treatment? | Low risk |
| Was contradicting evidence weighted appropriately? | Low risk |
| Were conclusions driven by evidence? | Low risk |
Notes: H1 (training warns about sycophancy) was given every opportunity to be supported. No supporting evidence was found despite comprehensive search.
Domain 5 — Source-Back Verification¶
| Source | Extract Verified | Assessment Consistent | Discrepancy |
|---|---|---|---|
| SRC01 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC02 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC03 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC04 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC05 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC06 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC07 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC08 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC09 | Yes | Yes | None |
| SRC10 | Yes | Yes | None |
- Discrepancy count: 0
- Corrections applied: None
- Unresolved flags: None
Overall Assessment¶
Rating: Low risk
The methodology was thorough and the absence finding is well-supported by comprehensive search across multiple domains. The main limitation is the inherent difficulty of proving a negative — the absence of sycophancy from training could theoretically be contradicted by a single training program not examined.
Researcher Bias Check¶
The researcher notes the structural challenge: searching for something that does not exist risks confirming a negative through insufficient search rather than through genuine absence. The mitigation was breadth: 10 independent source types, multiple search term variants, both AI safety terminology and human-factors equivalents.