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Re:AI and Drug Discovery: Attacking the Right Problems by refurb on Saturday March 20, 2021 @09:30PM (#26527407)
Yup. People act like computer aided drug design is new, but it’s been happening since the 80’s with the same promises that never pan out. People are right to be skeptical.

That said, I could see computational drug design being helpful in particular circumstances solving very specific issues. But the idea it’s going to wholesale change the way drugs are designed and speed up the drug discovery process are very, very optimistic and the landscape is riddled with failed promises over the past 40 years.

Re:AI and Drug Discovery: Attacking the Right Problems by ta988 on Sunday March 21, 2021 @12:04AM (#26528025)
I work in drug discovery, we use computers all the time though at at every steps. Drug discovery is already computer aided, and they try to sell it like it is not... They just want to sell their expensive and biased statistical model that doesn't do much more than a regression but use the latest shiny thing (knowledge graphs, rnn, svm, you name it ...)
Re:AI and Drug Discovery: Attacking the Right Problems by refurb on Sunday March 21, 2021 @09:53AM (#26530443)
What ticks me off is the hyperbole. "We're revolutionizing drug discovery" and "we'll reduce your attrition rate by orders of magnitude".

No, no you won't. If your offering a tool that fixes a specific issue I'm facing, then ok, I'll listen. But scientists don't take well to bullshit.

Re:AI and Drug Discovery: Attacking the Right Problems by ta988 on Sunday March 21, 2021 @12:05AM (#26528029)
It's a bit like people that want to disrupt the bodega or the breakfast juice or a one drop of blood full test for all diseases. You can pitch it as loud as you want, when you have a shitty product it will not make it better.