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From my experience, there seems to be two theoretical/computational research scientist types: the one who doesn't really care about the numbers but focuses on e
by chm 13y ago
From my experience, there seems to be two theoretical/computational research scientist types: the one who doesn't really care about the numbers but focuses on equations and what they really tell us, and the one who only cares about numbers. The latter is dangerous.
- rotskoff 13y agoIndeed, in computational chemistry there seems to be two classes of theorists. The first group attempts to simulate a realistic system using high performance computing and achieve, typically, agreement with existing experiments. The second group tries to think through problems and hopes to provide explanations that don't need the brute force approach. The former model often lacks both creativity and quantitative accuracy. The latter might be impossible for some chaotic or complex systems. I have to agree that having "theorists" who simply are trying to compute some quantity to match existing data must do so very carefully.