Polymer Timeline Project (a.k.a. What I Did While Waiting for Election Results)
I asked ChatGPT to give me a list of the top 50 synthetic polymers used in drug delivery.
It gave me 47 polymers — pretty close! But after removing duplicates and similar polymers (e.g., methyl vs. ethyl variants of the same backbone), I ended up with 39 distinct polymers.
Then I asked for the first reported year and a supporting reference for each one:
✅ 14/39 years were correct (about 36%)
📚 1/39 references was correct and verifiable (2.6%)
It’s a good reminder that AI can be a great starting point – but it’s no substitute for a trip through the literature archives!
I also added the flag of the country where each polymer was first reported, which includes discoveries from Portugal, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Japan, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic, and China.
Let me know if anything looks off.
Polymer discovery timeline and the real references used (UNC Ainslie Lab): https://lnkd.in/eBbpQStx