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.

X thread 1; X thread 2

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

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

Code and data

Presented at Computational Organization Modeling Society Brown Bag Seminar 2023 and Harvard D^3 Institute research workshop 2022. Slides

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.

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