Black Box Science Era
So I was reading through TiBS today and came across an interesting phrase that put into words something that I've been thinking about for a couple of years now.
Quote:
"Computational modeling, intensive artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and rigorous statistical procedures are increasingly being placed at the heart of biotechnology together with highly innovative methods, techniques, and ideas from engineering, biology, computer science, physics, and chemistry. In addition to the increased breadth of technologies, there is also a rapidly increasing size and velocity of data being generated to the extent that human data supervision is coming to an end [3]. We are entering an era where scientists can no longer check, verify, replicate, or even analyze the deluge of incoming data. Scientific research is becoming a black box that provides us with new knowledge."
Gustafsson, C., Vallverdú, J., (2016) The Best Model of a Cat Is Several Cats.
TRENDS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY. 34(3). 207-213. DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2015.12.006 Weird title I know.
I thought it was quite interesting to see that it is being acknowledged that we are moving towards an era in which we will no longer be able to keep a track on exactly what is occurring during the collection of scientific data. No doubt this is a long way off for most fields, and since computers have logs I'm sure people could follow each step, however it seems this verbalises movement in this direction, towards an era where future scientists may become dependent on automated technologies and software/AI they do not fully understand. No doubt a long way off and/or a sci-fi-esque notion, but it looks more and more realistic every year.
[Also the warhammer nerds might see parallels with the Standard Template Constructs from 40k :p]