In the current era, technological advances are far more important to progress in the life sciences than ideas or analytical/computational methods. The cycle of

In the current era, technological advances are far more important to progress in the life sciences than ideas or analytical/computational methods. The cycle of innovation is quite fast. The human genome project is a classic example. Celera genomics came out with a a totally new DNA sequencing technology towards the end of the HGP, and managed to sequence the human genome in a fraction of the time. It so happens that the HGP had enough of a head start to release their data at the same time, and that their data and Celera's data were complementary in many ways. But imagine if the HGP started 5 years later, and Celera released their complete genome when HGP had only done 50%? It too would be considered a grand failure. A grand project needs to be timed very carefully. Even the ones that actually work well will be obsolete by their completion unless they happen to occur in the right part of the technology cycle.