But Mooooooomm... there's so much variability in Biology....

You got to say the title in the voice of Eric Cartman (go see South Park).

But something struck me. The Brain isn't stochastic. Behavior isn't stochastic (not unless you believe in Free Will, and I very much doubt that). If a lion stalks a zebra and the zebra notices, barring other complications (such as maybe altruistic sheilding of a baby zebra, whatever you call those), 10 times out of 10, the zebra will run. It's a certainty, not a probability. Of course, it wouldn't work if you studied a zebra in a lab while simulating a stuffed tiger attack, that isn't variability: that's stupidity on the experimenter's part.

Sure, it depends on what level you look at. Spike trains from individual cortical neurons do appear to be stochastic. But experiments suggest that by looking over the population and measuring the mean rate, or (not to offend anyone), measuring synchrony, this stochasticity is taken care of. When you talk about behavior, it is predictable. Look at the stuff coming out of Newsome's lab these days for proof. There is one thing the brain must obey: causality.

For all the talk about physicists having it really easy (all they have to do is explain the universe, no big deal really), aren't they the guys who invented uncertainty? They found a way to deal with it. Yes, it required a paradigm shift, but you don't hear physicists whining: 'But Mooooomm... Heisenberg ruined my career...'
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