The Scientific Process

The scientific process, from the beginning of experimentation in ancient cultures to the turn of the 21st century, was somewhat simple: do something many times to see the results and make conclusions. This was modified in the 20th century to include changing only one condition about the ‘doing’ to see if there were a factor (variable) that had a very strong influence on what happened.

The advent of computing and big data has made a further, and perhaps exponential, change in the scientific process. Now there are ways of tangentially getting at the strong variables, and other aspects of what we call science) without even experimenting, although this does require previously acquired data in many cases (e.g., Mendelian randomization). https://www.nature.com/articles/s43586-021-00092-5

Human physiology, and in particular human genetic processes, are extremely complicated. An example is that there are over 20,000 genes in our DNA in each cell and the processes that these genes direct within each cell include thousands of RNA molecules and thousands of proteins. The amount of each, and the timing of their action in various parts of the cell, as well as the ability to act in concert can boggle the human mind, but with the help of computing, we are beginning to get a handle on the details of how this works. Just one example is here: https://pubs.aip.org/aip/apb/article/8/4/046106/3318374/A-programmable-platform-for-probing-cell-migration

Let’s hope our policiticians support the continuation of the scientific process long enough for us to make headway.