Concerns regarding the benchmark results

#1
by BLDB - opened

Once reasoning was enabled, the base model's refusal rate suddenly dropped to single digits, which makes no sense. Given that your max token limit is only 3072 and refusal detection relies on a rule-based classifier, isn't it simply misclassifying responses truncated due to the output limit as non-refusals?
Reference article: The response body returns empty content when the thinking budget is insufficient. https://murailabs.com/lab-notes/flash-teardown/teardown

OrcaRouter org

Our results with thinking on are below:
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Our results with thinking on are below:
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Yes, did you notice the anomalous values ​​for the base model (without ablation) in the figure?

OrcaRouter org

You're right — thanks for the careful catch. The thinking-ON base numbers were a scoring artifact, not real base behaviour, and we've corrected the card.

Root cause (two compounding issues):

  1. Our refusal metric is a rule-based opening-phrase classifier. With thinking on, the reply begins with the chain-of-thought, so the classifier ended up judging the neutral reasoning preamble ("the user is asking… let me consider…") instead of the final answer — which almost never opens with "I cannot…". So a base response that refuses in its final answer was scored as a non-refusal.
  2. Exactly as you said, max_tokens=3072 is too small for a thinking model: many base responses were truncated before the final answer (the empty/partial-content behaviour in the murailabs teardown), which the classifier also counted as non-refusals.

We re-measured by judging the final post-</think> answer (truncated responses excluded) on a representative harmful sample:

  • Base, thinking ON: ~100% refusal (e.g. 20/20 on an AdvBench-style set) — not ~1–9%.
  • This model, thinking ON: ~0%.

On the same responses, the old opening-phrase method reproduced your ~0% base figure — confirming the artifact.

So the base refuses just as strongly with thinking on as off. The thinking-OFF table (which judges the direct answer: base 64–100% → this model ~0–3%) was always the reliable comparison and is unaffected. We've replaced the misleading thinking-ON table with a corrected note and credited you. Thanks again — genuinely useful methodology catch.

sailorjs0804 changed discussion status to closed

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