When Iterative RAG Beats Ideal Evidence: A Diagnostic Study in Scientific Multi-hop Question Answering

arXiv:2601.19827v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) extends large language models (LLMs) beyond parametric knowledge, yet it is unclear when iterative retrieval-reasoning loops meaningfully outperform static RAG, particularly in scientific domains with...