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“Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it when you find it.” So once said singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, who snagged the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday.

But it’s not just other singers he has inspired. Last year, a team at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden to his music in the scientific literature: proof, they said, that Dylan himself is a rich source of inspiration for scientists, too.

Some of the examples don’t even try to make sense. There is  and Let’s not forget: “‘Blood On The Tracks’ from corpora lutea to endometriomas”. Other papers pun on his famous lines: “Like a rolling histone.”

In fact, in 2014, five scientists at the Karolinska revealed they’d had a longstanding bet to see who could sneak the most Dylan references into their work. Whoever racks up the most before retirement wins a free lunch.

What is it that draws scientists to quote Bob Dylan? “I’m a Bob Dylan fan,” says Ger Rijkers at the University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands. He particularly appreciates Dylan’s “adventurous and thought-provoking” lyrics. “That’s why I think he appeals to many scientists.”

Don’t think twice

However, Dylan isn’t the king of sci-lit references. In a new unpublished paper, Rijkers and his colleagues scoured the literature since 1990. They pulled up 211 publications citing Dylan in their titles, 80 per cent of which quoted from just two of Dylan’s songs: “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and “Blowin’ in the Wind”.

But The Beatles bested Dylan. No less than 589 papers referenced the rock band, with titles such as “I get height with a little help from my friends: herd protection from sanitation on child growth in rural Ecuador” and “Here Comes the Sun—Is Vitamin D a Cure For All That Ails Us?”

“I think the motive to use a song title from either Dylan or anyone else is that you want to attract your readership to your paper or editorial or review,” says Rijkers.

Unfortunately, referencing Dylan doesn’t seem to grab much extra attention. Last year’s investigation also noted articles mentioning him were cited slightly less often than others.

Rijkers and his colleague note that neither Dylan nor The Beatles may rule the roost forever. “The authors who were in their receptive years when the Beatles and Dylan were at their peak, may now be close to retirement,” they write.

“The landscape may also change because other artists, alive or death, take over the dominant position of The Beatles. Tomorrow never knows.”