This is a very common mistake with LLMs I find. Lots of people who have high domain knowledge will be very impressed by it due to situations where they phrase questions in such a way that it unintentionally leads it to a specific answer which they see as rightfully impressive, not realizing the information which they encoded in the question.

If you carefully study the actual prompt used: it already mentions the tail as a factor. Answer talks more on the tail. Just confidently!

No double blind methodology protocol.

The power of suggestion, ala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalism

So like Clever Hans the horse, in a way? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

Very accurate comparison honestly -- pattern recognition without understanding or underlying knowledge.

So, maybe a much, much more impressive version of Clever Hans? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans)

This is not to detract from the AIs accomplishment at all. If it read the scientist's prior work, then coming up with the same discovery as the scientist did is still astounding.

Or, put more negatively, like a mentalist? https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/