Your RAG System Retrieves the Right Data — But Still Produces Wrong Answers. Here’s Why (and How to Fix It).
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RAG pipelines can retrieve the correct documents yet still return wrong answers when conflicting documents land in the same context window. An extractive QA model silently picks one claim over another due to position bias, language strength, and lexical alignment — with no signal that a conflict existed. A reproducible 220 MB
Table of contents
The System Behaved Exactly as Designed. The Answer Was Still Wrong.What the Experiment TestsThree Scenarios, Each Drawn from ProductionRunning the ExperimentPhase 1: What Naive RAG DoesWhy the Model Behaves This WayBuilding the Conflict Detection LayerThe Resolution Strategy: Cluster-Aware RecencyPhase 2: What Conflict-Aware RAG DoesWhat the Heuristics Cannot CatchWhere the Research Community Is Taking ThisWhat You Should Actually Do With ThisRunning the Full DemoThe TakeawayReferencesModels UsedDisclosureSort: