Antibiotic resistance, mass extinction and fossil fuel distribution were some of the top 10 most popular science stories of the year.

In second place was a study which found there is no association between the MMR vaccine and an increased risk of autism.

Antibiotic resistance was the most popular

Pollution of the world’s oceans came in at number six, while a study about religion and selfishness was 10th in the list.

The list, compiled by academic content tracking company Altmetric, ranks the most shared and talked-about articles of the last 12 months.

Information for the Altmetric Top 100 list was collated over the course of a year from November 16, 2014.

The complete top 10 ranking:

1. It was found that a new antibiotic kills pathogens without detectable resistance.

2. Autism occurrence by MMR vaccine status among US children with older siblings with and without autism.

3. Accelerated modern human-induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction.

4. Cancer etiology. Variation in cancer risk among tissues can be explained by the number of stem cell divisions.

5. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science.

6. Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans: more than five trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea.

7. The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2˚C.

8. An efficiency comparison of document preparation systems used in academic research and development.

9. A neural algorithm of artistic style.

10. The negative association between religiousness and children’s altruism across the world.