Dr. X was the ideal man for this job because of his very disreputability. He 
was a reverse engineer. He collected
artificial mites like some batty Victorian lepidopterist. He took them apart 
one atom at a time to see how they worked, and when he found some clever 
innovation, he squirreled it away in his database. Since most of these 
innovations were the result of natural selection, Dr. X was usually the 
first human being to know about them.