Researchers from Delft University of Technology and Radboud University in the Netherlands have discovered more than three thousand references to songs by The Beatles in academic publications. The music of the Liverpool quartet proved to be the most popular source of inspiration for authors of scholarly works, surpassing Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, according to infohub.kz.
The results of a large-scale study led by Gabriel Boudel were published in the journal PLOS One. The scientists analyzed academic papers using artificial intelligence and assessed the legendary band's influence on science, Ars Technica reports.
Using the Scopus database and modern language models, the authors examined millions of academic publications across a wide range of disciplines. The researchers found 2,237 exact mentions of track titles and lyrics by the Liverpool quartet, as well as 963 examples of original wordplay.
Among the most popular compositions in article titles were "The Long and Winding Road" (798 mentions), "With a Little Help from My Friends" (209), and "Here, There and Everywhere" (129).
Interestingly, the famous 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need," which laid the foundations for technologies like ChatGPT, references the hit "All You Need Is Love." Another title that appeared was "The lung and winding road" in a piece about the aftermath of the coronavirus.
As the study's authors note, scientists often reinterpret the optimism of the rock band's songs, turning it into skepticism: for example, transforming phrases into "With a Little Help from My Enemies" or "Love Is Far from All You Need."