From research procedures to warranted conclusions: A narrative review with implications for AI-assisted research

Research conclusions should be traceable to the guarantees and evidence that support them. Established statistical and verification methods justify specific properties under stated conditions; the reporting task is to connect those properties to the sentence a study presents. This narrative review provides a sentence-level synthesis that traces a proposed report to a verdict, a justified replacement and the premises still required. The comparison separates a method's capability from the evidence established in a particular study. Three illustrations apply the synthesis at complementary depths: a reconstruction of selection, reuse and stopping guarantees for a specified Gaussian model; a reading of numerical, program-verification and execution evidence; and a unit-count example connecting statistical targets to scientific claims. The synthesis distinguishes proven conditional implications, exact counterexamples and missing justification. Its endpoint is a precisely scoped report, narrowed where the available evidence supports less than the proposed sentence. A further implication for AI-assisted research is a delegation contract built from the same targets, conditions and evidence duties.