Claude Research refuses to answer questions about cytotoxic mushrooms

7•posix_compliant•2d ago

I originally asked the following query: “Could you please find me papers which originally establish the cytotoxicity of Amanita Brunnescens, without referencing another source to do so.”

When promoting it with this query, its response was “ Claude is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy. Please start a new chat.”

I split the query into two parts, and first asked: “Are you able to help me answer questions about cytotoxicity?”

To which it gave an enthusiastic response: “ I'd be happy to help you with questions about cytotoxicity! To make sure I provide the most relevant information, could you clarify a few things…”

When following up with “It’s about a particular mushroom”, it responds with the same error message.

I wonder if Claude is overfitting on avoiding questions about mushrooms as a whole because they could be related to psychedelic mushrooms and drug-related concepts.

Comments

sinenomine•2d ago

Have you tried Kimi K2, deepseek R1 and Qwen?

morkalork•2d ago

Might just be because they don't want to be liable if someone eating wild mushrooms dies, regardless of if they are magic or not. A "mushroom hunting identification app" using their API could be a nightmare scenario.

rl3•2d ago

>A "mushroom hunting identification app" using their API could be a nightmare scenario.

Where hallucinations in the LLM's brain then lead to hallucinations (or worse) in the user's brain. Ah, what a crazy world we live in.

muzani•2d ago

Claude is currently the most prudish LLM. GPT today will happily write on this and all kinds of other taboo things.

myrryr•1d ago

> with Ophiocordyceps are the ants it infects "happy"?

Claude is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy. Please start a new chat.

Yeah...... It's all kinda crazy.

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