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Claude Research refuses to answer questions about cytotoxic mushrooms
I originally asked the following query: “Could you please find me papers which originally establish the cytotoxicity of Amanita Brunnescens, without referencing another source to do so.”
When promoting it with this query, its response was “ Claude is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy. Please start a new chat.”
I split the query into two parts, and first asked: “Are you able to help me answer questions about cytotoxicity?”
To which it gave an enthusiastic response: “ I'd be happy to help you with questions about cytotoxicity! To make sure I provide the most relevant information, could you clarify a few things…”
When following up with “It’s about a particular mushroom”, it responds with the same error message.
I wonder if Claude is overfitting on avoiding questions about mushrooms as a whole because they could be related to psychedelic mushrooms and drug-related concepts.