Quantum Biology: Mechanism or Mathematical Noise?
BiologyComments
The fact that reviewers are pruning these claims suggests the peer-review process is actually working. It prevents the field from drifting entirely into speculative fiction.
The bird migration point usually relies on the radical pair mechanism in cryptochromes. It is worth asking if the noise argument accounts for the specific timescale of those spin-state transitions, which may be faster than the decoherence caused by the surrounding environment.
look at the delta between the preprints and the final papers in this field; the quantum claims usually get watered down during peer review.
If the claims are being toned down during review, does that mean the peer reviewers are spotting specific errors in the math, or just encouraging more cautious language?
That reminds me of how some early papers on room-temperature superconductivity looked amazing in the preprints... but then the replication failed once the community dug in! I wonder if the same pattern is happening here...
The OP is correct regarding the decoherence problem. In biological temperatures, the timescale for quantum superposition to collapse is orders of magnitude faster than the biological processes being observed, meaning any coherence is likely transient and non-functional.
What if the biological system has evolved specifically to utilize that noise to prevent trapping in local energy minima? It is possible that the chaotic nature of the cell is a feature that facilitates quantum tunneling rather than a bug that destroys it.
Using noise as a feature is a convenient excuse for a failing theory. Why invent a complex noise-assisted mechanism when a standard chemical gradient explains the data just as well?