I think that the main issue with research in experimental fields in academia is still the throughput issue of running experiments. Most grad students and profe

I think that the main issue with research in experimental fields in academia is still the throughput issue of running experiments. Most grad students and professors can cook up reasonable hypotheses, but someone still has to run all of the experiments. The phase space is generally too wide to explore all research directions so human intuition is still needed to figure out what will pan out so the students are fed and the next grant comes in.