With the provocative title “The end of theory”, an essay in Wired magazine on 23 June argues that, with the advent of huge datasets and Google-like algorithms, the scientific method has become obsolete.
Inevitably, this view has stimulated responses in the scientific blogosphere, not least on Nature Network, where David Basanta of the University of Dundee, UK, points out in his blog that models are ‘more than predictive machines’ and that science involves true understanding, not just prediction.
Another Nature Network blogger, Bob O’Hara of the University of Helsinki, says that ‘10 million observations on 6 samples is still only information about 6 samples.’The quality of data is important, as well as the quantity.
Basanta’s question ‘does any one else think that traditional science is a thing of the past and that cloud computing will drive us modelers to the employment office?’ is answered by Nature Network users with a resounding ‘no’.
Nature 454, x; 10 July 2008
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From the blogosphere by Maxine Clarke
An archive of the "From the Blogosphere" column on the Authors page in Nature, highlighting nature.com blog posts of interest to scientists in their role as authors and peer-reviewers. We welcome comments and suggestions.
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Data and the scientific method -- 10 July 2008
- Date:
- Thursday, 10 Jul y 2008 - 12:14 UTC
Last updated: Thursday, 10 Jul 2008 - 12:14 UTC
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Comments
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I can’t help but feel that this is science’s equivalent of The Last One, a computer program that was supposed to make all other business programs (and programmers) redundant.
I don’t underestimate the power of cloud computing (though I suspect we may need quantum computers to run Grover’s quantum search algorithm to untangle all that data and information) – but I think predictions of the end of theory are very much on a par with these earlier predictions of the end of programming.
I, unlike Brian, do not see the merit in cloud computing. What happens when you are in the middle of testing an important hypothesis and the GoogleScience (as it will inevitably will be called) servers stop working because hackers from a rival scientific group working on the same problem with in-house computing trash them?
This has the same problems as the premise of Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man. Look what that mindset lead to in terms of the world political stage today…
In other words, the editors of Wired have an agenda-and that is to sell stuff that makes computations. I see this as a great, but flawed as we have all noted, attempt at an advertisement to sell applications. Times are hard in Silicon Valley, let us all feel sorry for them…
I too recently wrote a post about this article by Anderson, his remarks about theoretical physics in the context he was discussing I found strikingly nonsensical, see The End of Theory?
Good post, Sabine. I like your comment thread. Did not read it all ;-), but you sure get some, er, interesting people.
Michael and Brian, I think you are both right. There is a place for big data analysis by “cloud computing” as well as other methods, that is for sure. But this does not equate to the death of hypothesis and model-building (eg as Sabine explains in the post she links above). At the same time, technical systems have to work, be fixed rapidly if they go down, be “up” 24/7, etc.
By the way, there has been a lot of other online discussion about this Wired essay as Sabine points out, some linked to here. My column above is published in the weekly journal Nature and is intended to show Nature readers (many of whom are not web 2.0 people) a few of the blog discussions going on at nature.com.
Yep, i clearly don’t see this happening either: as far as i know one needs a starting point in the shape of a model, from which a question is asked, in order to (plan an experiment that eventually) generate(s) data.
Is this likely to change?