As a fellow animal researcher: this article is pretty much devoid of informed or carefully considered thought about the issue.
Many commenters have noted that biological systems are mind-numbingly complex, and we're not even close modeling these systems in a way that's useful for testing novel hypotheses of biology researchers.
The field in which I work, neuroscience, frequently does employ computational modeling, but this modeling is primarily used to provide a mechanistic link between inputs and outputs observed in an in vivo experiment. Present a sensory signal to an animal, observe something about neural dynamics in a brain region, THEN use simplified biologically-inspired elements to provide a plausible mechanism between the two. Even the state-of-the-art in silico model is always child's play compared to the real thing. We definitely don’t know enough about that real thing to build a model that would circumvent its need.
This author also works in a neuroscience lab – they should know better.
Many commenters have noted that biological systems are mind-numbingly complex, and we're not even close modeling these systems in a way that's useful for testing novel hypotheses of biology researchers.
The field in which I work, neuroscience, frequently does employ computational modeling, but this modeling is primarily used to provide a mechanistic link between inputs and outputs observed in an in vivo experiment. Present a sensory signal to an animal, observe something about neural dynamics in a brain region, THEN use simplified biologically-inspired elements to provide a plausible mechanism between the two. Even the state-of-the-art in silico model is always child's play compared to the real thing. We definitely don’t know enough about that real thing to build a model that would circumvent its need. This author also works in a neuroscience lab – they should know better.