mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

ReThinker: Scientific Reasoning by Rethinking with Guided Reflection and Confidence Control

arXiv 2602.04496 ↗First posted 4 Feb 2026cs.AIcited by 4

On the map: LLM reasoning → Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

Expert-level scientific reasoning remains challenging for large language models, particularly on benchmarks such as Humanity's Last Exam (HLE), where rigid tool pipelines, brittle multi-agent coordination, and inefficient test-time scaling often limit performance. We introduce ReThinker, a confidence-aware agentic framework that orchestrates retrieval, tool use, and multi-agent reasoning through a stage-wise Solver-Critic-Selector architecture. Rather than following a fixed pipeline, ReThinker dynamically allocates computation based on model confidence, enabling adaptive tool invocation, guided multi-dimensional reflection, and robust confidence-weighted selection. To support scalable training without human annotation, we further propose a reverse data synthesis pipeline and an adaptive trajectory recycling strategy that transform successful reasoning traces into high-quality supervision. Experiments on HLE, GAIA, and XBench demonstrate that ReThinker consistently outperforms state-of-the-art foundation models with tools and existing deep research systems, achieving state-of-the-art results on expert-level reasoning tasks.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 32 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Feb 2026.

Builds on

32 of 46 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Eigen-1: Adaptive Multi-Agent Refinement with Monitor-Based RAG for Scientific Reasoning25 Sep
  2. 2025WebThinker: Empowering Large Reasoning Models with Deep Research Capability30 Apr

Other references · 30

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  2. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
  3. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  4. 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,598
  5. 2021WebGPT: Browser-assisted question-answering with human feedbackcited by 1,722
  6. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,422
  7. 2025s1: Simple test-time scalingcited by 1,311
  8. 2023GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistantscited by 1,084
  9. 2022Program of Thoughts Prompting: Disentangling Computation from Reasoning for Numerical Reasoning Taskscited by 1,057
  10. 2023Large Language Models as Optimizerscited by 830
  11. 2025DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Modelscited by 755
  12. 2023Siren's Song in the AI Ocean: A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Modelscited by 695
18 more
  1. 2023ChemCrow: Augmenting large-language models with chemistry toolscited by 609
  2. 2024Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agentscited by 537
  3. 2025Kimi K2: Open Agentic Intelligencecited by 523
  4. 2025Humanity's Last Examcited by 467
  5. 2023Universal Self-Consistency for Large Language Model Generationcited by 198
  6. 2025WebDancer: Towards Autonomous Information Seeking Agencycited by 180
  7. 2025xbench: Tracking Agents Productivity Scaling with Profession-Aligned Real-World Evaluationscited by 118
  8. 2025WebExplorer: Explore and Evolve for Training Long-Horizon Web Agentscited by 86
  9. 2025MiroThinker: Pushing the Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Research Agents via Model, Context, and Interactive Scalingcited by 72
  10. 2025Think Twice: Enhancing LLM Reasoning by Scaling Multi-round Test-time Thinkingcited by 46
  11. 2025Evaluation of Best-of-N Sampling Strategies for Language Model Alignmentcited by 38
  12. 2024Evaluating the Evaluator: Measuring LLMs' Adherence to Task Evaluation Instructionscited by 34
  13. 2025Training LLM-Based Agents with Synthetic Self-Reflected Trajectories and Partial Maskingcited by 16
  14. 2025SCOPE: Prompt Evolution for Enhancing Agent Effectivenesscited by 16
  15. 2025Evaluating Position Bias in Large Language Model Recommendationscited by 14
  16. 2025A Theoretical Study on Bridging Internal Probability and Self-Consistency for LLM Reasoningcited by 13
  17. 2025Adaptive Termination for Multi-round Parallel Reasoning: An Universal Semantic Entropy-Guided Frameworkcited by 10
  18. 2025Probabilistic Reasoning with LLMs for k-anonymity Estimationcited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026MiroThinker-1.7 & H1: Towards Heavy-Duty Research Agents via Verification
  2. 2026Efficient Reasoning with Balanced Thinking
  3. 2026ReTreVal: Reasoning Tree with Validation and Cross-Problem Memory for Large Language Models
  4. 2026Learning to Refine Hidden States for Reliable LLM Reasoning
  5. 2026One Refiner to Unlock Them All: Inference-Time Reasoning Elicitation via Reinforcement Query Refinement
  6. 2026ReM-MoA: Reasoning Memory Sustains Mixture-of-Agents Scaling
  7. 2025ReFIne: A Framework for Trustworthy Large Reasoning Models with Reliability, Faithfulness, and Interpretability
  8. 2026ReHoPER: Receding-Horizon Planning for Enhanced Reasoning