Anthropic Study: Scientists Mostly Use Claude for Data Analysis and Writing

Anthropic recently released a research report based on 207,000 research sessions, showing how scientists use AI. The results show scientists mainly use Claude for data analysis and writing, while they rarely use AI for data collection or coming up with research ideas.

By field, computer science tops the list at 11.9% of Claude research sessions. CS researchers are only 4.3% of researchers worldwide, but they account for 32.7% of Claude Code sessions. As for tasks, data analysis makes up 33.7% of Claude sessions and writing 32%, both higher than the time researchers actually spend on them.

In contrast, data collection takes 28.6% of researchers' work time but only 11.5% of Claude sessions, and research ideas or hypothesis generation just 4.2%. Anthropic believes AI usage depends on whether research tasks fit AI well. A survey of 528 scientists matches these findings.