# ReliableRAG: Combating Misinformation in Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Reliability-Guided Reasoning Chains

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.25487 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.25487/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 9 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Aug 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/knowledge-and-tool-augmented-reasoning/)
- Retrieval-augmented generation / [RAG robustness and adaptive retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/rag/rag-robustness-and-adaptive-retrieval/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Text Embeddings by Weakly-Supervised Contrastive Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03533/) (2022)
- [ChatIE: Zero-Shot Information Extraction via Chatting with ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10205/) (2023)
- [Trustworthiness in Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10102/) (2024)
- [Worse than Zero-shot? A Fact-Checking Dataset for Evaluating the Robustness of RAG Against Misleading Retrievals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16101/) (2025)
- [Towards More Robust Retrieval-Augmented Generation: Evaluating RAG Under Adversarial Poisoning Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16708/) (2024)
- [Evaluating the Retrieval Component in LLM-Based Question Answering Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06458/) (2024)
- [LevelRAG: Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Multi-hop Logic Planning over Rewriting Augmented Searchers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18139/) (2025)
- [Resisting Contextual Interference in RAG via Parametric-Knowledge Reinforcement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05154/) (2025)
- [ALoFTRAG: Automatic Local Fine Tuning for Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11929/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a powerful architecture for Question Answering (QA) by integrating external information into Large Language Models (LLMs). However, false, inaccurate, and misleading information in news and social media poses a serious challenge to real-world RAG systems, especially in multi-hop QA, where complex multi-step reasoning can be misled by even a single deceptive misinformation segment in the retrieved documents. Existing approaches mainly rely on implicit alignment or explicit regulation, but their limited ability to assess fine-grained information reliability makes them vulnerable to deceptive misinformation that is semantically relevant to the question yet factually incorrect, leading to erroneous answers. To address this limitation, we propose ReliableRAG, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first reliability-driven framework that mitigates deceptive misinformation in multi-hop QA through fine-grained evaluation of individual triples. ReliableRAG first extracts information segments from source documents and represents them as structured triples. It then quantifies triple reliability by combining query-triple semantic relevance with triple credibility, retaining only the top-K reliable and non-redundant triples. Based on these refined triples, ReliableRAG autoregressively constructs robust reasoning chains to consolidate trustworthy evidence and filter deceptive misinformation, producing accurate answers faithful to reliable information. Experiments on three multi-hop QA datasets show that ReliableRAG outperforms existing methods, substantially improving the factual reliability and robustness of RAG systems under deceptive misinformation injection.
