Maximize Your Consensus Experience With These Best Practices

Our product will always be a work in progress, and this is just the first iteration. Not all searches work perfectly, and bugs will exist. We hope this article will help improve your experience.

It is important to know that Consensus is not a chatbot.

Instead, Consensus is AI-powered search engine designed to take in research questions, find relevant insights within research papers, and synthesize the results using the power of large language models.

Focus on the Right Subject Matter:

Consensus only searches through peer-reviewed scientific research articles to find the most credible insights to your queries. We recommend asking questions related to topics that have likely been studied by scientists.

Consensus has subject matter coverage that ranges from medical research and physics to social sciences and economics.

Examples of queries that perform well and have loads of relevant research include:

• What are the benefits of mindfulness meditation?
• Does spanking impact childhood development?
• “Does NO3 improve exercise performance?”
• “What predicts success for a start-up founder?”
• “What is the impact of climate change on GDP?”
• “Is creatine safe?”
• “Is social media bad for sleep?”
• “What is the best treatment for restless leg syndrome?”
• “Do direct cash transfers reduce poverty?”

Consensus is NOT meant to be used to ask questions about basic facts such as: “How many people live in Europe?” or “When is the next leap year?” as there would likely not be research dedicated to investigating these subjects.

Follow Recommended Formats for Your Query

Although there is no “correct” way to structure a query, we have seen the best results with the following formats:

• Yes/no questions:
  • “Are Covid-19 vaccines effective?”
  • “Are genetically modified foods safe?”
  • “Does the death penalty reduce crime?”
• Ask about the relationship between concepts: 
  • “What is the impact of climate change on GDP?”
  • “Does creatine improve cognition?”
  • “Does raising the minimum wage increase unemployment?”
• Ask about the effects, impact, or benefits of a concept:
  • “What are the effects of gratitude practice?”
  • “What are the effects of immigration on the economy?”
  • “What are the benefits of mindfulness meditation?”
• Input an “open-ended phrase” about your subject of interest:
  • “Avocado health effects”
  • “Moral responsibilities regarding cloning”
  • “Advantages of ear tagging in farm animals”

Other query formats that can produce strong results but have some limitations include:

• Two concepts separated by an “and”:
  • Zinc and depression
  • Limitation: you are missing out on all our neat synthesize features and our models won’t be as accurate in parsing your intent!
• Ask a question that requires a number:
  • “How much protein is needed per day for muscle gain?”
  • Limitation: can sometimes be hit or miss! When it works it’s great, though!
• Ask about “what is the best…”
  • “What is the best treatment for restless leg syndrome?”
  • Limitation: most research papers aren’t written like this, so you will usually just get a list of possible best options
• Ask a question about “how to” do something
  • “How do you increase local voter turnout?”
  • Limitation: similar to the above, most research papers aren’t written like this, so you will usually just get a list of possible methods
• Keyword searching:
  • Fructose consumption
  • Limitation: you are missing out on all our neat synthesize features and our models won’t be as accurate in parsing your intent!

Still have questions?

Join our Slack community to ask the Consensus team or your fellow users, as well as stay up to date on Consensus news, and request new features.