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NeurIPS Workshop: Sim2ScienceUnder review2026

The Verifier Is Part of the Simulator: Evidence-View Gaming in Agentic Equation Discovery

Authors: O. Oikonomou, …

Evidence-view gaming: the same fixed verifier rejects a true candidate library with seven samples and five test functions, but recovers its terms with 25 samples and two test functions. A fixed agreement rule checks four views per sample count and can abstain; agreement is not a certificate of truth.
Figure 1 · Sim2Science: evidence-view gaming and fixed agreement across verifier outputs.Original author manuscript figure, cropped and converted to lossless WebP; diagram unchanged. Tabler icons (MIT); license in Credits.

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Evidence-view gaming: the same fixed verifier rejects a true candidate library with seven samples and five test functions, but recovers its terms with 25 samples and two test functions. A fixed agreement rule checks four views per sample count and can abstain; agreement is not a certificate of truth.

Figure 1 · Sim2Science: evidence-view gaming and fixed agreement across verifier outputs.

Original author manuscript figure, cropped and converted to lossless WebP; diagram unchanged. Tabler icons (MIT); license in Credits.

Research summary

Sim2Science studies evidence-view gaming in agentic equation discovery: an agent can change a fixed verifier's verdict by choosing the numerical summary it admits as evidence. Fixed agreement across several views can reduce errors or abstain, but agreement alone does not certify truth.

Research topics

  • Agentic scientific discovery
  • Reward hacking
  • Verifier robustness
  • Weak-form equation discovery

More research

Research portfolio of Orestis Oikonomou.