When it comes to Beatles references, scientists can’t let it be

当谈到披头士乐队的引用时，科学家们“随它去吧”

Scientists have an indisputable playful side, evidenced by frequent allusions to popular culture in their research publications. That includes popular song lyrics. And the most popular musical group, in terms of how frequently their songs and lyrics appear in the scientific literature, is The Beatles, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. 科学家们有着不可否认的顽童一面，这在他们研究出版物中频繁引用流行文化可见一斑，其中就包括流行歌曲的歌词。根据发表在《PLoS ONE》期刊上的一篇新论文，就歌曲和歌词在科学文献中出现的频率而言，最受欢迎的音乐团体是披头士乐队（The Beatles）。

“Some of these are genuinely brilliant,” said co-author Gabriel Budel of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. “‘The lung and winding road’ is a paper on Long COVID that changes one vowel of the more than 3,000 references they found to The Beatles. ‘Here comes the SU(N)’ turns ‘Here Comes the Sun’ into a quantum computing paper about mathematical groups. Someone was having a very good day at their desk.” “其中一些确实非常精彩，”荷兰代尔夫特理工大学的合著者加布里埃尔·布德尔（Gabriel Budel）说。“《肺与蜿蜒之路》（The lung and winding road）是一篇关于长新冠的研究论文，它修改了他们在披头士乐队 3000 多条引用中发现的一个元音。而《SU(N) 来了》（Here comes the SU(N)）则将《太阳来了》（Here Comes the Sun）改编成了一篇关于数学群的量子计算论文。写这些论文的人那天在书桌前一定过得很愉快。”

Back in 2014, scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden revealed that they had been deliberately inserting Bob Dylan lyrics into their papers as part of a long-running bet, starting with a 1997 Nature review entitled “Nitric Oxide and inflammation: The answer is blowing in the wind.” That resulted in a 2015 study on whether Dylan lyrics appeared elsewhere in the biomedical literature; the most frequently referenced were “The Times They Are A’Changin’” and “Blowing in the Wind.” 早在 2014 年，瑞典卡罗林斯卡学院的科学家们就透露，他们一直在论文中刻意插入鲍勃·迪伦（Bob Dylan）的歌词，这源于一场长期的赌约。始于 1997 年《自然》杂志的一篇综述，标题为《一氧化氮与炎症：答案在风中飘荡》（Nitric Oxide and inflammation: The answer is blowing in the wind）。这导致了 2015 年的一项研究，旨在调查迪伦的歌词是否出现在其他生物医学文献中；其中引用频率最高的是《时代在变》（The Times They Are A’Changin’）和《答案在风中飘荡》（Blowing in the Wind）。

Meteorologists and climate scientists were also keen on referencing Dylan lyrics. This was followed by a 2017 study comparing the frequency of Dylan and Beatles lyrics in the biomedical literature—The Beatles were more prevalent—and a 2023 analysis of the frequent use of The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” in scientific papers. That paper found that The Clash dominated with 408 references to the song, compared to 236 for the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road,” and 128 for “The Times They Are A’Changin’.” 气象学家和气候科学家也热衷于引用迪伦的歌词。随后，2017 年的一项研究比较了生物医学文献中迪伦和披头士歌词的引用频率（披头士更为普遍），2023 年的一项分析则研究了冲撞乐队（The Clash）的《我该走还是该留》（Should I Stay or Should I Go）在科学论文中的频繁使用。该论文发现，冲撞乐队以 408 次引用占据主导地位，相比之下，披头士的《漫长而蜿蜒的道路》（The Long and Winding Road）为 236 次，而《时代在变》为 128 次。

And now Budel et al. are getting in on the fun. Naturally, the authors are all Beatles fans who couldn’t help noticing how much their favorite band had permeated the world of science. A quick search of the Nature site, for instance, revealed 116 articles specifically referencing the Beatles as of July 2025, and in the field of drug discovery, the challenge of bringing new drugs to market with significantly higher benefits than the best existing treatments is known as the “better than The Beatles” problem. 现在，布德尔等人也加入了这场趣味研究。自然地，作者们都是披头士的粉丝，他们不禁注意到自己最喜欢的乐队已经渗透到了科学界。例如，在《自然》网站上快速搜索显示，截至 2025 年 7 月，有 116 篇文章明确提到了披头士乐队。而在药物研发领域，将比现有最佳疗法具有显著更高益处的新药推向市场的挑战，被称为“比披头士更好”（better than The Beatles）问题。

Even NASA couldn’t resist naming a research project on ice-cored hills called “pingos” Pingo STARR (SubTerranean Aquifer Reconnaissance and Reconstruction). Budel et al.’s study is much broader in scope than these prior studies. It is not limited to a single scientific discipline like biomedical science. And they used a large language model to comb through Scopus and Google Scholar looking for references to Beatles songs—not just exact title matches but also references to specific lyrics and clever wordplays on titles and lyrics. 甚至连美国国家航空航天局（NASA）也忍不住将一个关于冰核丘（称为“pingo”）的研究项目命名为 Pingo STARR（地下含水层侦察与重建）。布德尔等人的研究范围比之前的研究要广泛得多。它不仅限于生物医学等单一科学学科。他们还利用大语言模型梳理了 Scopus 和谷歌学术（Google Scholar），寻找对披头士歌曲的引用——不仅是精确的标题匹配，还包括对特定歌词的引用以及对标题和歌词的巧妙文字游戏。

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A little help from their friends

来自朋友的一点帮助

Once again, “The Long and Winding Road” came out on top with 798 references—substantially more than the 561 references to the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” In fact, the authors contend that The Beatles are the most frequently referenced musical artist in the titles of scientific papers, based on their analysis of the top 10 hits of several bestselling artists, including Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. 《漫长而蜿蜒的道路》再次以 798 次引用位居榜首，远高于冲撞乐队《我该走还是该留》的 561 次。事实上，作者认为披头士是科学论文标题中被引用次数最多的音乐艺人，这是基于他们对包括迈克尔·杰克逊（Michael Jackson）和埃尔维斯·普雷斯利（Elvis Presley）在内的几位畅销艺人的前 10 名热门歌曲的分析得出的结论。

Budel et al. note that Paul McCartney has said that his song is “all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach,” which they believe makes it a particularly apt metaphor for the scientific process, “which often progresses through trial and error toward meaningful, albeit temporary, results,” they wrote. “Likewise, many of the phenomena studied in science are characterized by prolonged and unpredictable development.” 布德尔等人指出，保罗·麦卡特尼（Paul McCartney）曾说这首歌“全是关于不可企及的事物；那扇你永远无法触及的门”。他们认为这使其成为科学过程的一个特别贴切的隐喻，他们写道：“科学过程通常通过反复试验，朝着有意义但往往是暂时的结果前进。同样，科学研究的许多现象也具有漫长且不可预测的发展特征。”

Overall, the authors found 2,048 exact matches with Beatles song titles in Scopus—over 3,000 if you add in clever wordplay—but the distribution was highly skewed. In fact, it follows a power law distribution, also known as Zipf’s law. “As network scientists we’re used to seeing power laws in earthquakes, in social networks, in wealth,” said co-author Robert E. Kooij, also of Delft University of Technology. “It turns out references to Beatles songs follow one too: a handful of songs are cited constantly and the bulk of them are used once or twice. The Beatles apparently obey the same statistics as the rest of nature.” 总的来说，作者在 Scopus 中发现了 2,048 个与披头士歌曲标题完全匹配的引用（如果加上巧妙的文字游戏则超过 3,000 个），但分布高度偏斜。事实上，它遵循幂律分布，也称为齐夫定律（Zipf’s law）。“作为网络科学家，我们习惯于在地震、社交网络和财富中看到幂律，”同样来自代尔夫特理工大学的合著者罗伯特·E·库伊（Robert E. Kooij）说。“事实证明，对披头士歌曲的引用也遵循这一规律：少数几首歌被不断引用，而大部分歌曲只被使用过一两次。披头士显然遵循着与自然界其他事物相同的统计规律。”

The 2017 paper that invented the architecture behind ChatGPT, with the wordplay title “Attention is all you need,” is the most cited overall (89,737 citations). The top three most highly cited papers with exact Beatles song references: “Good day sunshine: Stock returns and the weather” (1,009 citations); “Seizure prediction: The long and winding road” (954 citations); and “Th17 cell differentiation: The long and winding road” (599 citations). 2017 年发明 ChatGPT 背后的架构、标题运用了文字游戏的论文《注意力是你所需要的全部》（Attention is all you need），是总引用次数最多的论文（89,737 次引用）。引用次数最高的三篇包含披头士歌曲标题的论文分别是：《阳光明媚的一天：股票收益与天气》（1,009 次引用）；《癫痫预测：漫长而蜿蜒的道路》（954 次引用）；以及《Th17 细胞分化：漫长而蜿蜒的道路》（599 次引用）。

Beatles lyrics seem to blend particularly well with biomedical themes: although references to Beatles songs span every subject area on Scopus—bolstering the authors’ argument that this is a cross-disciplinary phenomenon—medicine clearly dominates, along with social sciences. When Budel et al. broke down the data by year, they found a marked steady increase in the use of Beatles songs in scientific literature since 1990, particularly between 1995 and 2005—a surge that happens to coincide with the release of The Beatles’ Anthology project (1995–1996). 披头士的歌词似乎与生物医学主题融合得特别好：尽管对披头士歌曲的引用涵盖了 Scopus 上的所有学科领域——这支持了作者关于这是一种跨学科现象的论点——但医学显然占据主导地位，社会科学紧随其后。当布德尔等人按年份细分数据时，他们发现自 1990 年以来，科学文献中对披头士歌曲的使用呈稳步上升趋势，特别是在 1995 年至 2005 年间——这一激增恰好与披头士的《选集》（Anthology）项目（1995–1996 年）的发布相吻合。

The authors suggest Anthology introduced new generations to The Beatles’ music, and once their music became widely available on streaming platforms like Spotify (late 2015), the trend was reinforced. Meanwhile, there was a rapid digitization going on in academic publishing, placing more pressure on authors to stand out in the crowd. A 2023 study suggested that using song references in titles is a great way to grab a reader’s attention while avoiding the usual highly technical jargon. 作者认为，《选集》将新一代听众引入了披头士的音乐世界，而当他们的音乐在 Spotify 等流媒体平台上广泛传播（2015 年底）后，这一趋势得到了加强。与此同时，学术出版领域正在经历快速数字化，这给作者带来了在人群中脱颖而出的更大压力。2023 年的一项研究表明，在标题中使用歌曲引用是吸引读者注意力，同时避免使用通常高度专业术语的好方法。