The citation race just got a scoreboard. tow center tests put perplexity at a 37 percent citation…
the citation race just got a scoreboard. tow center tests put perplexity at a 37 percent citation error rate against chatgpt search's 67, while chatgpt search carries 900 million weekly users, per oct 4 reporting.
the better researcher is the smaller one.
Context
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia published 'AI search has a citation problem' on Mar 6, 2025. It ran 200 tests on eight AI search engines, including ChatGPT Search and Perplexity, and found they collectively gave incorrect answers to more than 60 percent of queries.
Ars Technica and Nieman Lab covered the study in March 2025.
The Tow Center did test Perplexity and ChatGPT Search on citations. The 37 percent and 67 percent error rates and the 900 million weekly users were not seen in the excerpts read, so unsupported here, not refuted. The study read is dated March 2025, not Oct 4, 2026, and the collective figure it reports is above 60 percent.
'the better researcher is the smaller one' is the author's opinion.
Related work
Watch next
- Look for a newer Tow Center round that reports per-engine error rates.
Sources
- CJR Tow Center, Mar 6, 2025cjr.org
- Ars Technica, Mar 13, 2025arstechnica.com
- Nieman Lab, Mar 2025niemanlab.org
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 11 October 2026 at 02:04 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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