Lessons / Part 3. Checking what an assistant tells you
16 A citation is a lead, not a reference
Candidate papers marked unverified, with the claim to find in each and the search strings to run, so every one is opened and read before it is cited.
What people usually ask
Give me five references that show that adding silica fume raises the compressive strength of concrete.What comes back
Five citations that read as real, where a true title carries the wrong year, or a DOI that resolves to a different paper.
Ask this instead
I need published support for the claim that <claim>. Do not give me references.
Give me up to five candidate papers: title and authors as you recall them, each marked unverified. For each, one line on what I should find in the text to support the claim, and roughly where (abstract, results, a figure).
No DOIs, no page numbers, no volume or issue numbers. Where you are unsure of a title, say so beside it.
Then give me the search strings to run in <database> for each candidate, and two more strings for the claim itself, so I can find papers you do not know about.
I will open every paper and find the claim in its text before I cite it.Attach: Nothing.
Why it works: The assistant cannot open the papers, so the prompt asks only for leads and keeps the reading with the reader.
Drafted with Fable 5.1 from my notes; chosen and edited by me.