ChatGPT and other AI writing tools may be quietly turning science into a popularity contest, repeatedly steering researchers toward the same papers while overlooking new and novel works that could actually advance the field. Monoculture, in terms of frequency and statistics, is where the same limited set of sources or assets recur over and over again, drowning out novel voices and fresh outlooks: the same limited set of songs in radio scheduling; the same swathe of authors and books in airport…