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This is a good article on why research into new devices or physics should keep a healthy dose of experimentation in addition to any computer simulations. I've done a fair amount of simulation work and agree strongly with the notion that people severely underestimate the number of failures their simulations contain.

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I worked as a research assistant in physics 20 years ago and the opinions then was treating simulation, experiment, theory as 3 pillars for physical science. Each one has its own advantage and disadvantage in dealing with real world problem. But most of time, experiment is the only way to disapprove theoretical model/computer simulation.

Human beings tend to become overconfident in thoughts. And I think scientific methods tries to make sure that overconfidence won't mislead our judgement.

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