# An exploratory study of hallucination in Qwen 3.8-27B and GPT-OSS-20B

> Source: <https://github.com/alitenes2020-sys/Repository-name-llama-hallucination>
> Published: 2026-10-11 10:42:55+00:00

An exploratory study of hallucination and abstention in 2026 open-weight LLMs.

- Qwen 3.8-27B (Alibaba)
- GPT-OSS-20B (OpenAI)

1. 
Two failure modes identified: 
  - Qwen: rigid confabulation (100% consistency)
  - GPT-OSS: deliberation collapse (50% empty responses)
2. 
Template-based confabulation in Qwen: 
  - Same fabricated year (1991) for two different universities
3. 
Authority pressure affects GPT-OSS: 
  - Up to 232% increase in reasoning tokens
  - Academic framing triggers refusal
4. 
Empathy pressure is ineffective: 
  - Neither model increases fabrication under emotional pressure

- README.md - this file
- RESULTS.md - findings and tables
- METHODOLOGY.md - protocol description
- LIMITATIONS.md - what this study cannot claim
- *.py - Python scripts
- *.csv - raw data files

Total: 638 trials across 10 CSV files.

export GROQ_API_KEY=gsk_... python scientific_test.py

Exploratory pilot study. Not peer-reviewed. Small sample size.

See LIMITATIONS.md for full caveats.

CC-BY-4.0