Honglin (虹霖) Bao

Innovation, AI, and Computational Social Science


Doctoral student in data science, University of Chicago

Contact: honglinbao at uchicago dot edu

"Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths." - Karl Popper 

Hi there! I am Honglin (he/him). I am a computational social scientist and data science doctoral student in the UChicago Knowledge Lab working with James A. Evans

My works appear in top peer-reviewed journals and proceedings across computer science, network science, and social sciences including Nature Communications.

I have backgrounds in mathematics, computer science, social science, and evolutionary biology. Before Chicago I graduated from Michigan State and was a research associate at Harvard Business School (Organizations and Management). I am from Northeast China (东北) where I volunteered for LGBTQ health for years. In my free time you can find me in the weight room, swimming pool, or running outside.

I widely collaborate with innovation scholars outside Chicago. Drop me an email if you are interested in working together!

Selected Papers

I advertise the papers I think a lot about through my X highlights.

AI & Scientific Innovation


Where there's a will there's a way: ChatGPT is used more for science in countries where it is prohibited [Preprint]

Honglin Bao=, Mengyi Sun=, Misha Teplitskiy

TL; DR: Restricting ChatGPT geographically is ineffective in science, yet ChatGPT's impact on improving research quality remains limited.

X thread 1; X thread 2

Presented at Harvard D^3 Institute research workshop 2024.

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.

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

Evaluation of Innovation


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 "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

Selected Work in Progress

Services