VERIRAG: Healthcare Claim Verification via Statistical Audit in Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems are increasingly adopted in clinical decision support, yet they remain methodologically blind-they retrieve evidence but cannot vet its scientific quality. A paper claiming "Antioxidant proteins decreased after alloferon treatment" and a rigorous multi-laboratory replication study will be treated as equally credible, even if the former lacked scientific rigor or was even retracted. To address this challenge, we introduce VERIRAG, a framework that makes three notable contributions: (i) the Veritable, an 11-point checklist that evaluates each source for methodological rigor, including data integrity and statistical validity; (ii) a Hard-to-Vary (HV) Score, a quantitative aggregator that weights evidence by its quality and diversity; and (iii) a Dynamic Acceptance Threshold, which calibrates the required evidence based on how extraordinary a claim is. Across four datasets-comprising retracted, conflicting, comprehensive, and settled science corpora-the VERIRAG approach consistently outperforms all baselines, achieving absolute F1 scores ranging from 0.53 to 0.65, representing a 10 to 14 point improvement over the next-best method in each respective dataset. We will release all materials necessary for reproducing our results.