Featured Research
Featured Research
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I advertise the papers I think a lot about through my X highlights.
My Google Scholar is here.
AI for Innovation and Discovery
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 to date of how computational social science emerges from — and transforms — the social sciences, and uncovered a division-to-unity pattern.
ACM Showcases; X thread; Bluesky thread
Interactive demo of the evolution of computational social science
Language models surface the unwritten code of science and society [Preprint]
Honglin Bao, Siyang Wu, Jiwoong Choi, Yingrong Mao, James A. Evans
TL; DR: We present an algorithmic framework -- pushing LLMs to speak out their heuristics by searching for deeper self-consistent hypotheses that can explain their decision-making. This framework surfaces the hidden codes embedded in scientific judgment.
Oral presentation at ICSSI (Intl. Conf. on the Science of Science and Innovation) 2025. Slides
Social Processes of Ideas
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 The Theoretical Organization Modeling Society Brown Bag Seminar 2023 and Harvard D^3 Institute research workshop 2022. Slides
Persistence paradox in dynamic science [Preprint]
Honglin Bao, Kai Li
TL; DR: Tracking how computer scientists responded to the unexpected success of AlexNet and the deep learning revolution it sparked, we highlight scientific breakthroughs as a mechanism for power reconfiguration within the field.
Presented at The 2024 Joint Workshop of the ASIS&T Special Interest Groups for Metrics and Scientific-Technical Information.
Mapping symbolic ties in U.S. sociology: Evidence from doctoral dissertation vocabularies [Paper]
Poetics ("field top" in the sociology of culture), 2026
Alex Xiaoqin Yan, Honglin Bao, Tom R. Leppard, Andrew P. Davis
TL; DR: Status and geo-location shape "symbolic ties" and the formation of schools of thought in US sociology.
Coverage "Sociological Review 理论志"; X thread
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
Infrastructures for Better Discovery
Mapping overlaps in benchmarks through perplexity in the wild [Paper]
ICLR 2026. Rated among the top ~2% of all submissions
Siyang Wu*, Honglin Bao*, Sida Li*, Ari Holtzman, James A. Evans
* The first three authors co-led the project and were ordered randomly. The underlined name represents the master's student working with me.
TL; DR: We develop benchmark signatures (i.e., in-the-wild tokens whose model perplexity is predictive of benchmark performance) to assess benchmark validity and overlap.
Presented at CMU Language Technology Institute Colloquium 2025. Slides
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