Thread says AlphaFold 2 under-cited a 2002 protein-structure pipeline

SchmidhuberAI · x · 2026-07-29

A thread argues that the 2021 AlphaFold paper under-cited earlier protein-structure prediction work, especially a 2002 Baldi/Pollastri pipeline that reportedly used a very similar MSA-based approach at far higher compute cost.

It frames the debate as one of research lineage and attribution: the author claims the key idea predates AlphaFold 2 by decades and points to even earlier work from the late 1980s, while also noting a personal connection to DeepMind through a former student.

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