AI-summarized evidence — read with the abstract still open
A synthesis layer over the literature — useful, and itself a claim you have to check.
consensus.app — synthesizes findings across many papers into a quick evidence snapshot for a question you ask in plain language.
Day 1's literature exercise — plus D1·4/D1·5, since literature-scout accepts a Consensus result the same way it accepts a Semantic Scholar one, and D2·5, since a citation backed this way can end up in the manuscript.
consensus.app, sign up with email. Free tier covers the course; Premium is ≈ €10–15/mo if you need more beyond it.
Ask Consensus the same underlying question as your Semantic Scholar results (e.g. "does AI exposure reduce hours worked?") and compare what comes back to the actual paper's abstract.
If the synthesis doesn't match what the abstract itself says, trust the primary source — the same discipline as literature-scout's “unverified” rule, applied to a synthesis tool instead of a raw citation.
It's a synthesis layer, not a citation graph — good for “what does the literature broadly say,” not for finding or verifying a specific paper exists.
Doesn't track whether a specific paper's findings have been supported or contradicted by later citing work — that's a different, narrower question Scite answers.
The Day-1 afternoon block (“literature & positioning”) leans on Consensus (and Elicit) to find the gap in the literature for your own research question, not just the shared case.
literature-scout accepts a Consensus result you've pasted into the chat as valid support for a citation — the same standing as a Semantic Scholar search result. Anything Consensus surfaces can end up cited in the manuscript (D2·5), and gets cross-checked again by the referee skill's citation check (D1·4).
Elsevier's LeapSpace bundles this kind of synthesis with full-text access across several publishers under one institutional login — worth a quick check with the library before buying separate seats for Consensus/Elicit/Scite.
Whichever synthesis tool you use, the rule doesn't change: an AI summary of a paper is an unverified claim until you've opened the paper.
Back to D1·3's decision graph on the home page.