The law of adaptive bone remodeling : a case for crying Newton?

The biological mechanisms of strain-adaptive bone remodeling are largely unknown. Yet, several authors published algorithms to mimic this process, without prior validation of its premises. Biologists are sometimes confused by this seemingly irresponsible behavior. However, this kind of inductive investigation has a long tradition in physics, inspired by Newton. Depending on its predictive capacity, an algorithm can reveal information about the process it simulates and generate fruitful hypotheses about underlying mechanisms. This obviously requires comparison of its results to an experimental reality at some point in time. But as the algorithms tend to be complicated, it is not unreasonable that they are discussed in the literature already in their developmental phases.