Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

[OT]—It surprises me that Boeing’s engineers thought their model of metal fatigue was so precise:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/business/06air.html

Boeing had expected the aluminum skin and the supporting joints on the planes to last through 60,000 cycles of takeoffs and landings before airlines need to be concerned about cracks. But the Southwest jet had nearly 40,000 cycles…

Given the complexity of the model in question, a factor of 1.5x does not seem like much of a margin for error. (In biology, a model’s being off by only one order of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 10, is often considered a respectable effort.)