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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26177 |
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Table of Contents:
- Recent work has questioned whether large language models (LLMs) can perform genuine in-context learning (ICL) for scientific experimental design, with prior studies suggesting that LLM-based agents exhibit no sensitivity to experimental feedback. We shed new light on this question by carrying out 800 independently replicated experiments on iterative perturbation discovery in Cell Painting high-content screening. We compare an LLM agent that iteratively updates its hypotheses using experimental feedback to a zero-shot baseline that relies solely on pretraining knowledge retrieval. Access to feedback yields a $+53.4\%$ increase in discoveries per feature on average ($p = 0.003$). To test whether this improvement arises from genuine feedback-driven learning rather than prompt-induced recall of pretraining knowledge, we introduce a random feedback control in which hit/miss labels are permuted. Under this control, the performance gain disappears, indicating that the observed improvement depends on the structure of the feedback signal ($+13.0$ hits, $p = 0.003$). We further examine how model capability affects feedback utilization. Upgrading from Claude Sonnet 4.5 to 4.6 reduces gene hallucination rates from ${\sim}33\%$--$45\%$ to ${\sim}3$--$9\%$, converting a non-significant ICL effect ($+0.8$, $p = 0.32$) into a large and highly significant improvement ($+11.0$, $p=0.003$) for the best ICL strategy. These results suggest that effective in-context learning from experimental feedback emerges only once models reach a sufficient capability threshold.