Claude's policy filter blocks bioinformatics work with pathogen names
A postdoc in computational virology reports persistent issues with Claude's usage policy filter when writing scripts for phylogenetic pipelines in bioinformatics work. The researcher uses Claude for sequence and metadata processing tasks.
Specific model behavior
The policy violation error occurs when mentioning pathogens by name in scripts. This happens across multiple platforms and models:
- Platforms affected: Claude Code and claude.ai
- Models affected: Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6
- Only Sonnet 4 doesn't flag the same content
Current workarounds
The researcher has identified two functional bypass methods:
- Describe the bioinformatics task without naming the specific organism
- Add the organism name in attached files instead of in the prompt text
- Downgrade to Sonnet 4, though this means paying users can't access the latest models without workarounds
Policy gap for researchers
Anthropic reportedly has a cyber use case exemption form for security researchers encountering similar false positives with policy filters. However, no equivalent exemption process exists for biology or genomics researchers working with pathogens in legitimate research contexts.
The researcher calls for others in genomics or infectious disease bioinformatics experiencing similar false positives to raise awareness of the issue.
📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI
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