Writing for the Reviewer: Defensive Writing in GPT Models

Abstract

Researchers increasingly use ChatGPT to revise their papers, and recent GPT versions often narrow or even retract the authors' claims. We call such changes defensive writing when the given material does not support them, and we test two explanations: the model corrects the authors' overclaiming, or it writes for an anticipated reviewer. We ask GPT versions and models from other developers to rewrite paragraphs from papers written before ChatGPT, or to write from an evidence sheet that lists a paper's method and results. Defensive writing grows with GPT version. GPT-6-astra retracts the authors' claims outright, and when it writes from the evidence sheet, it still adds the most ungrounded qualifications. The results favor the anticipated-review explanation, and correcting overclaiming explains only a small part. When the models are only asked to polish, defense stays near the level of the originals; mentioning review raises it, and one round of self-review raises it further. At the same time, fewer than one in ten of the claims GPT-6-astra retracts are overstated. AI reviewers score defensive rewrites higher, while human readers find them harder to read and the authors less certain. Combining AI writing with AI review may amplify this style.