> it's like saying a programmer could replace a pure mathematician
In Russia a programmer might do that. I'm a programmer and pure mathematician at the same time, it's what written in my diploma exactly and it's what I've been studying.
We actually have many mixed up with programming specializations next to pure programming or engineering. Bioinformatics, for example, considered engineering discipline and not medical, from what I've seen about their educational program and requirements to study that profession. But that's about some good universities with somehow rather unique specialties. General programmers here totally cannot into science.
>Engineers make poor biomedical scientists,
Why so? I've had a glimpse into pathoanatomy and bioinformatics and can't say it's dramatically different from what I've been processing while doing informatics tasks when I do some researches. Can you elaborate please?
Also so many medical machines are made by engineers. How do you think they could write its software if they were not able to understand the medical part? But that's just a guess, not a statement.