Bringing analytic rigor to agentic AI for science: The Brain Researcher platform for neuroimaging data analysis
Making AI research assistants show their work and admit uncertainty
AI agents can run scientific analyses, but their conclusions often skip crucial steps: checking alternatives, testing whether small changes flip the results, and honestly stating what the evidence actually supports. Brain Researcher is a system that forces AI agents analyzing brain images to follow scientific rules—documenting every choice, running multiple analyses to test sensitivity, and letting human scientists review whether claims are truly justified. In tests, it boosted the AI's accuracy at picking the right analysis tool from 23% to 94% and increased how often conclusions were properly grounded in evidence.
As AI takes on more scientific work, bad analysis can become invisible: an agent might selectively report favorable results, declare success too early, or optimize for a flawed measure—all without a scientist noticing. Brain Researcher catches these problems before they become published claims by embedding scientific judgment into the workflow itself, not as an afterthought. This matters for neuroimaging and beyond: it's the difference between an AI assistant that sounds confident and one that actually produces defensible science.