title: Beware the tail that wags the dog: informal and formal models in biology.
abstract: Informal models have always been used in biology to guide thinking and devise experiments. In recent years, formal mathematical models have also been widely introduced. It is sometimes suggested that formal models are inherently superior to informal ones and that biology should develop along the lines of physics or economics by replacing the latter with the former. Here I suggest to the contrary that progress in biology requires a better integration of the formal with the informal.
authors.affiliation: Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115 jeremy@hms.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Jeremy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gunawardena
mesh_terms: D003585:Cell Biology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008128:Logic; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D008954:Models, Biological; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008958:Models, Molecular