Ethical LLM-Assisted Research: A Framework for Responsible Delegation, Verification, and Epistemic Value

Large language models (LLMs) are becoming routine instruments of scientific research, assisting with literature synthesis, hypothesis development, coding, and formal reasoning. Their use raises a central epistemic question: when parts of scientific reasoning are delegated to an artificial system, what conditions must remain under human control for the resulting knowledge claims to retain epistemic legitimacy and accountable authorship? This paper develops a normative and conceptual framework for analyzing such delegation. Scientific reasoning is treated as a distributed process in which the origin of a contribution may vary between human and machine, while responsibility for its acceptanc...

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