I advertise the papers I think a lot about through my X highlights.
My Google Scholar is here.
AI for Innovation
Language models surface the unwritten code of science and society [Preprint]
Honglin Bao, Siyang Wu, Jiwoong Choi, Yingrong Mao, James A. Evans
The underlined names represent the master's students working with me.
TL; DR: We present an algorithmic framework -- pushing LLMs to speak out their heuristics by searching their deeper self-consistent hypotheses that can explain their decision-making. This framework surfaces the hidden codes embedded in many aspects of human society, including science, where an unwritten norm is that reviewers prioritize storytelling quality over intrinsic rigor.
Introspective growth: Automatically advancing LLM expertise in technology judgment [Preprint]
Siyang Wu, Honglin Bao, Nadav Kunievsky, James A. Evans
The underlined names represent the master's students working with me.
TL; DR: Based on a new benchmark of 1.3 million hard-to-distinguish patent pairs, we study self-questioning as both a practical mechanism for automatically enhancing LLM comprehension of technologies and a diagnostic probe into how their internal and external knowledge are organized.
Where there's a will there's a way: ChatGPT is used more for science in countries where it is prohibited [Paper]
Quantitative Science Studies, 2025
Honglin Bao, Mengyi Sun, Misha Teplitskiy
TL; DR: After its release, ChatGPT was used for science more by countries where it was prohibited, with little evidence of its association with research quality.
Presented at Harvard D^3 Institute research workshop 2024.
From division to unity: A large-scale study on the emergence of Computational Social Science, 1990–2021 [Paper]
TheWebConf/WWW 2025
Honglin Bao, Jiawei Zhang, Mingxuan Cao, James A. Evans
TL; DR: We conducted the largest quantitative examination (on ~11 million papers) of how computational social science (CSS) emerges from— and transforms — the social sciences, and uncovered a division-to-unity pattern.
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Showcases; X thread; Bluesky thread; Poster
Interactive demo for CSS evolution using transformer embeddings
Innovation Evaluation
A simulation-based analysis of the impact of rhetorical citations in science [Paper]
Nature Communications, 2024
Honglin Bao, Misha Teplitskiy
TL; DR: Using a counterfactual simulation, we find that "bad" citing without intellectual influence reduces the reproduction of inequality in science.
Featured in Nature's Computational Social Science Collection; Selected media coverage “Swarm Agents Club 集智俱乐部”; X thread
Presented at Computational Organization Modeling Society Brown Bag Seminar 2023 and Harvard D^3 Institute research workshop 2022. Slides
Innovation Diffusion
Cultural Ties in American Sociology [Preprint]
Revise & Resubmit, Poetics ("field top" in cultural sociology)
Alex Xiaoqin Yan, Honglin Bao, Tom R. Leppard, Andrew P. Davis
TL; DR: Status and geo-location shape "cultural ties" and the formation of schools of thought in American sociology.
Presented at ASA (Meeting of the American Sociological Association) Science Knowledge and Technology Section 2023, Harvard D^3 Institute research workshop 2023, and NC State Structures, Identities, and Society Seminar 2023. Slides