The Implementation Lottery: Auditing Idea Reliability in Automated Research
Automated research agents use program scores to judge ideas. We call variation in this evidence across implementations the implementation lottery. We introduce an Idea Reliability Audit that freezes mechanism specifications, samples independent programs, and compares selected code with fresh implementations of its mechanism. Across 3,048 assignments on 31 tabular classification tasks, all four primary aggregation tests have Holm-adjusted $p\geq0.56$. Under mean-of-five selection, the prespecified secondary intention-to-treat comparison gives selected-code premiums of 0.38 [0.08, 0.82] and 0.45 [0.05, 1.12] accuracy-equivalent points for Bounded and Agentic execution, respectively. Minimum...
| Authors | Jingjie Ning, Shanshan Zhong, Xiaochuan Li et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.MA |
| Published | 29 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 4 October 2026 |
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