Do you believe that you can reliably distinguish ‘problems that cannot be solved by humans’ from ‘problems that humans could solve in principle but haven’t yet’?
“Solvable in principle by humans” and “solvable by humans with our current methods” are not the same thing.
Most of the fruits that you can gather with the current tools of molecular biology seem to be picked. There are also a lot of man-hours thrown on them.
Progress in biology will come more from developing new methods than using the existing methods.
Most of the fruits that you can gather with the current tools of molecular biology seem to be picked.
I am not quite sure what the scope of the statement is, but that’s strongly counter to the things I’m hearing from the molecular biologists that I know (two family members and a few close friends- I’m plugged in to the field, but not a member of it). Could you elaborate on your reasons for this belief?
My impression is that the discipline has spent the last couple decades amassing a huge (huge) database of observed genes and proteins and whatnot, and isn’t even close to slowing down. The problem is in navigating that wealth of observation and translating it in to actionable technologies. New methods will make discovery radically more efficient, but the technologically available space that these scientists have yet to explore is so large as to be intimidating. If anything, the molecular biologists I know are discouraged by the size of the problem being solved relative to the number of people working on it- they feel like their best efforts can only chip away at an incredibly large edifice.
If anything, the molecular biologists I know are discouraged by the size of the problem being solved relative to the number of people working on it-
The main question is the value of a marginal molecular biologist chipping away at the problems with current methods.
All those new knowledge about genes we got through the human genome project produces few promising leads for new drugs. Big Pharma companies sit on large pile of cash at a time where the interest rates are near zero and they buy back shares while laying off scientists.
Currently we don’t know what 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 of the human genes do. Those where we do know a function might have additional functions. With a lot of hard work we might find out more functions, but that doesn’t bring us much further.
Few get a few new drug targets but drug targets aren’t the limiting factor for drug discovery. Predicting which drugs actually help is the more important issues as clinical trials are really expensive. Most drugs put into clinical trials fail.
Apart from the actual use of the science, progress is hold back by poor ability to replicate findings.
Some of that is because scientists don’t work properly but it can also be that the monoclonal antibody you order today is not the same as the one that you ordered a month ago even through you ordered it from the same lab and it has the same label.
Then even if your finding is correct and you publish it, that doesn’t mean that your paper is going to be read. The language in which papers are written is very complicated and not easily interpretable by computers.
This all hits the nail on the head I think. The marginal value of my PhD is, I’m convinced, at most zero, and perhaps negative, because it adds to the noise. The replicability of papers is significantly hindered by lack of automation, to my mind.
Also, saying that we don’t know what 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 of human genes do is wildly optimistic. Better to say we have some idea what 2⁄3 of them do.
“Solvable in principle by humans” and “solvable by humans with our current methods” are not the same thing. Most of the fruits that you can gather with the current tools of molecular biology seem to be picked. There are also a lot of man-hours thrown on them.
Progress in biology will come more from developing new methods than using the existing methods.
I am not quite sure what the scope of the statement is, but that’s strongly counter to the things I’m hearing from the molecular biologists that I know (two family members and a few close friends- I’m plugged in to the field, but not a member of it). Could you elaborate on your reasons for this belief?
My impression is that the discipline has spent the last couple decades amassing a huge (huge) database of observed genes and proteins and whatnot, and isn’t even close to slowing down. The problem is in navigating that wealth of observation and translating it in to actionable technologies. New methods will make discovery radically more efficient, but the technologically available space that these scientists have yet to explore is so large as to be intimidating. If anything, the molecular biologists I know are discouraged by the size of the problem being solved relative to the number of people working on it- they feel like their best efforts can only chip away at an incredibly large edifice.
The main question is the value of a marginal molecular biologist chipping away at the problems with current methods.
All those new knowledge about genes we got through the human genome project produces few promising leads for new drugs. Big Pharma companies sit on large pile of cash at a time where the interest rates are near zero and they buy back shares while laying off scientists.
Currently we don’t know what 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 of the human genes do. Those where we do know a function might have additional functions. With a lot of hard work we might find out more functions, but that doesn’t bring us much further. Few get a few new drug targets but drug targets aren’t the limiting factor for drug discovery. Predicting which drugs actually help is the more important issues as clinical trials are really expensive. Most drugs put into clinical trials fail.
Apart from the actual use of the science, progress is hold back by poor ability to replicate findings. Some of that is because scientists don’t work properly but it can also be that the monoclonal antibody you order today is not the same as the one that you ordered a month ago even through you ordered it from the same lab and it has the same label.
Then even if your finding is correct and you publish it, that doesn’t mean that your paper is going to be read. The language in which papers are written is very complicated and not easily interpretable by computers.
This all hits the nail on the head I think. The marginal value of my PhD is, I’m convinced, at most zero, and perhaps negative, because it adds to the noise. The replicability of papers is significantly hindered by lack of automation, to my mind.
Also, saying that we don’t know what 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 of human genes do is wildly optimistic. Better to say we have some idea what 2⁄3 of them do.