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Honest question: how many of the rushed papers for #COVID19 drug predictions have led to experimental testing and subsequent promise? I& #39;ve heard the "reason" that docking-only and AI-only papers are being pumped out is because we need solutions to the pandemic, and fast. 1/n
It& #39;s now been 3-4 months since a lot of that work started being published, and where has it got anyone? Have wet-labs picked up the ongoing stories of 1M, 100M, 600M docked molecules and tested any of them? How about the "AI discovers potential inhibitors of this or that"? 2/n
I& #39;d be happy to be convinced that all this work was put to good use by someone, but somehow I& #39;m doubtful. Certainly not in substantial amounts? Ultimately, in the 3-4 months that have passed, if more complete work was done, we& #39;d have promising results now, no? So why rush? 3/n
Is the appropriate lesson then that nothing replaces good scientific research? The scientific method is described the way it is for a reason? 4/n
Don& #39;t get me wrong, serendipity is also an important piece of many scientific advances (and is integral to recent work I assisted), but throwing out computational outputs and hoping for someone else to test them is not collaboration, is not serendipity, and is not productive. 5/n
As far as I know, the approach has yielded little beyond wasting a reader& #39;s time. Collaboration is tough to build in a day, and requires fostering and nurturing. Without someone to trust and test your predictions, you may as well use RAND() in Excel and publish that list too. 6/n
