The biology is a bit more complicated than that, though. Sure, if we had a big database of all the correlation factors in some easily computer-readable format, standardized testing procedures that lined up with these factors, and an army of experts keeping all of this up-to-date, it would be easy to write a script to make it all work. But we don't, and (in my off-the-cuff estimation) such a project could wind up being of Human Genome Project-esque scale.

Watson is giving us a way of doing this when the available data is in a much less accommodating format (namely, scientific literature.) Not, perhaps, the biggest achievement ever, but pretty nifty and useful.