NYT explores "magic hands" in labs and how AI startups monetize tacit knowledge
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-08-28
This thread points to a long New York Times feature by Carl Zimmer: some researchers consistently get experiments to work, earning a special term from colleagues — "magic hands." That gift is really tacit knowledge, the operational details and intuition that lab notebooks and papers never capture.
Using startup Transfyra as an example, the piece examines how AI can mine these messy, non-traditional data sources — lab practices, habits, failures — to change science beyond coding agents. A worthwhile read on both tacit knowledge and new AI-for-science data plays.
Related event: Transfyr Emerges to Capture Scientists' 'Magic Hands' with AI(2 posts)→
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