Pathetic thinking

Modelers with shared biological interests can have varying opinions about what a useful model looks like and the purpose of modeling, or rather the opportunities that exist to perform important work in a particular field.

In a recent commentary, Jeremy Gunawardena [BMC Biol 12: 29 (2014)] argues that models in biology are “accurate descriptions of our pathetic thinking.” He also offers three points of advice for modelers: 1) “ask a question,” 2) “keep it simple,” and 3) “If the model cannot be falsified, it is not telling you anything.” I whole-heartedly agree with these points, which are truisms among modelers; however, in my experience, the advice is followed to an extreme by some researchers, who interpret “ask a question” to mean that every model should be purpose-built to address a specific, narrow question, which ignores opportunities for model reuse, and who interpret “keep it simple” to mean that models should be tractable within the framework of traditional approaches only, ignoring new approaches that ease the task of modeling and expand the scope of what’s feasible. Some extremists seem to even hold the view that the mechanistic details elucidated by biologists are too complex to consider and therefore largely irrelevant for modelers.

Gunawardena may have given these extremists encouragement with his comment, “Including all the biochemical details may reassure biologists but it is a poor way to model.” I acknowledge that simple, abstract models, which may focus on capturing certain limited influences among molecular entities and processes and/or certain limited phenomenology, have been useful, and are likely to continue to be useful for a long time. However, there are certainly many important questions that can be feasibly addressed that do depend on consideration of not “all” of the biochemical details but rather on consideration of more, or even far more, of the biochemical details than usually considered by modelers today.

The messy details would also be important for the development of “standard models,” which do not currently exist in biology. Standard models in other fields, such as the Standard Model of particle physics, drive the activities of whole communities and tend to be detailed, because they consolidate understanding and are useful in large part because they identify the outstanding gaps in understanding. Would standard models benefit biologists?

An affirmative answer is suggested by the fact that there are many complicated cellular regulatory systems that have attracted enduring interest, such as the EGFR signaling network, which has been studied for decades for diverse reasons. A comprehensive, extensively tested, and largely validated model for one of these systems, meaning a standard model, would offer the benefits of such a model (which have been proven in non-biological fields) and would aid modelers by providing a trusted reusable starting point for asking not one question but many questions.

The extremists should take note of the saying attributed to Einstein, "Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Gunawardena J (2014). Models in biology: 'accurate descriptions of our pathetic thinking'. BMC biology, 12 (1) PMID: 24886484

Bachman, J., & Sorger, P. (2011). New approaches to modeling complex biochemistry Nature Methods, 8 (2), 130-131 DOI: 10.1038/nmeth0211-130

Chelliah V, Laibe C, & Le Novère N (2013). BioModels Database: a repository of mathematical models of biological processes. Methods in molecular biology, 1021, 189-99 PMID: 23715986