# QuestGen: Effectiveness of Question Generation Methods for Fact-Checking Applications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.21441 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21441/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [The Curious Case of Neural Text Degeneration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09751/) (2019)
- [FacTool: Factuality Detection in Generative AI -- A Tool Augmented Framework for Multi-Task and Multi-Domain Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13528/) (2023)
- [MultiFC: A Real-World Multi-Domain Dataset for Evidence-Based Fact Checking of Claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.03242/) (2019)
- [Fact-Checking Complex Claims with Program-Guided Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12744/) (2023)
- [AVeriTeC: A Dataset for Real-world Claim Verification with Evidence from the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13117/) (2023)
- [Bad Actor, Good Advisor: Exploring the Role of Large Language Models in Fake News Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12247/) (2023)
- [Generating Literal and Implied Subquestions to Fact-check Complex Claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06938/) (2022)
- [ProoFVer: Natural Logic Theorem Proving for Fact Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11357/) (2021)
- [Generating Fact Checking Briefs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.05448/) (2020)
- [FaVIQ: FAct Verification from Information-seeking Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02153/) (2021)
- [Varifocal Question Generation for Fact-checking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12400/) (2022)
- [QuanTemp: A real-world open-domain benchmark for fact-checking numerical claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17169/) (2024)
- [BRENDA: Browser Extension for Fake News Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13270/) (2020)
- [Surprising Efficacy of Fine-Tuned Transformers for Fact-Checking over Larger Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12147/) (2024)
- [FactCheck Editor: Multilingual Text Editor with End-to-End fact-checking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19482/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Evaluating LLM-based Agents for Multi-Turn Conversations: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22458/) (2025)
- [Discrepancy Detection at the Data Level: Toward Consistent Multilingual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11928/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Verifying fact-checking claims poses a significant challenge, even for humans. Recent approaches have demonstrated that decomposing claims into relevant questions to gather evidence enhances the efficiency of the fact-checking process. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence showing that this question decomposition can be effectively automated. We demonstrate that smaller generative models, fine-tuned for the question generation task using data augmentation from various datasets, outperform large language models by up to 8%. Surprisingly, in some cases, the evidence retrieved using machine-generated questions proves to be significantly more effective for fact-checking than that obtained from human-written questions. We also perform manual evaluation of the decomposed questions to assess the quality of the questions generated.
