Doctor Dunsel.docVIP

Comment Doctor Dunsel Gregory A Petsko Address: Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454-9110, USA. E-mail: petsko@ Published: 29 March 2004 Genome Biology 2004, 5:104 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2004/5/4/104 ? 2004 BioMed Central Ltd “Dunsel … is a term used by midshipmen at Starfleet Nature, perhaps feeling guilty about the hordes of scientists Academy. It refers to a part which serves no useful purpose.” who might be losing sleep over the prospect of having to go out and actually work for a living, tried to soften the blow with an editorial comment called ‘Don’t fear the Robot Scientist’ (page 181 of the same issue) that completely missed the point. “Contrary to first impressions,” the commentator says cheer- ily, “an automated system that designs its own experiments will benefit young molecular geneticists. At first glance, it seems to render obsolete the armies of postgrads and postdocs employed in the world’s molecular-genetics laboratories.” Mr Spock, in Star Trek, Episode 53: “The Ultimate Computer” Paranoia began morphing into depression with the arrival of the 15 January 2004 issue of Nature. On page 247 was a paper by King et al. entitled ‘Functional genomic hypothesis generation and experimentation by a robot scientist’. The paper describes an automated system that uses techniques from artificial intelligence to formulate hypotheses to That wasn’t what was worrying me at all. Replacing my grad- uate students and postdocs with machines that would work around the clock and never pester me for more disk space on the computer or a new set of pipetmen; that would never complain about the temperature in the lab and never forget to clear up after themselves - that didn’t sound so bad. It was the thought that it might eventually replace me that was frightening. After all, this thi