Titles in Biomedical Research Articles: Who’s Quoted More: Dylan or the Beatles?

The researchers surveyed the titles of article in the biomedical research field and looked for titles that quoted songs. They found that references to the Beatles outnumbered references to Bob Dylan:

We found 589 publications in the biomedical literature which contained a song of the Beatles in the title, and a total of 57 different songs were quoted. For Bob Dylan we found 201 publications that quoted 26 different songs. Figure 1 shows that almost 80% of all Dylan quotes stem from 2 songs: The times they are a-changing and Blowing in the wind.

The top song of The Beatles is The long and winding road (39% of all publications). Together with All Together Now, Come Together, Here, There And Everywhere, With A Little Help From My Friends, Here Comes The Sun, Ticket To Ride, A Hard Day's Night and Let It Be they contribute to 80% of The Beatles quotes. The catalogue of The Beatles therefore is quoted more often and more extensively than that of Bob Dylan (p < 0.001;

FWIW. You can read more here. Ger Rijkers, Anya Luscombe, Carla Sloof, Scientists Gain Inspiration from Bob Dylan and the Beatles Song Titles: What Goes on in Biomedical Literature.

(ljs)