Researchers Debate LLM Reasoning: Are Chain-of-Thought Traces Truly Faithful?

AndrewLampinen · x · 2026-08-06

In a discussion with researchers including Mel Mitchell, Andrew Lampinen argues that current narratives around LLM reasoning are misleading. He points out that while some papers highlight unfaithfulness, many studies also find substantial faithfulness (about half the tokens). He calls for cognitive science studies comparing human think-aloud traces on the same problems, rather than making arguments about reasoning based on the wrong evidence.

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