Re: Nice, but the problem still stands
To be fair, they weren't trying to solve the "how", that's not where the big money is. The "what" (structure comes from one of those tantalising hypothetical protein sequences) is where the scientific entrepreneurs see the utility at this point, for the medical applications. I agree with you that the how is intellectually more interesting, hopefully it will be able to pull something in the way of principles out of this AI stuff that help us construct a virtual ribosome which shows us what actually happens in the folding process - opening the black box.
I was disappointed to see one of the challenge organisers quoted as saying it would encourage people to do "more thinking and less pipetting". More thinking is always a good thing, but less experiments... not so sure.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
