The trial in genetic programming is too random, compared to what a human researcher would try.

Doesn't this tear down the entire premise of the article? "Just trial & error" dismisses all the thought that goes into designing experiments and analyzing the data.

Human trial and error is more like a hill-climbing algorithm or a localized graph search algorithm, things which computers can do quite well.

You'd be surprised at how directed forces applied to "random" values yields surprising solutions.