Reply to Baveye and Darnault: Useful models are simple and extendable

Katharine Z. Coyte (1) , Herve Tabuteau (2) , Eamonn A. Gaffney (1) , Kevin R. Foster (1) , William M. Durham (1)

1 University of Oxford
2 IPR - Institut de Physique de Rennes

Baveye and Darnault (2) contend that our model (3) is too simple and that we should have considered more intricate biofilm distributions and other microbes than bacteria. We were surprised by these comments. All models can be made more complex, such that the observation that the world is “not that simple” relative to a given model is an empty truism. The very goal of a model is to seek simplicity to increase understanding. One can also always …

Domaines: Physique [physics]

Katharine Z. Coyte, Herve Tabuteau, Eamonn A. Gaffney, Kevin R. Foster, William M. Durham. Reply to Baveye and Darnault: Useful models are simple and extendable. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017, 114 (14), pp.E2804-E2805. ⟨10.1073/pnas.1702303114⟩. ⟨hal-01518504⟩