The June issue of Wired Magazine profiles Google founder Sergey Brin’s quest to change health research, and his own future at the same time. At 36 years old, Brin has discovered that he possesses the indicator gene that has a higher risk of Parkinson’s. So, instead of waiting on the sidelines while traditional research may or may not find a cure, he is channeling a portion of his wealth toward the previously under-funded disease. But he doesn’t want research done the traditional way. His radical methodology is described:
Brin is after a different kind of science altogether. Most Parkinson’s research, like much of medical research, relies on the classic scientific method: hypothesis, analysis, peer review, publication. Brin proposes a different approach, one driven by computational muscle and staggeringly large data sets. It’s a method that draws on his algorithmic sensibility—and Google’s storied faith in computing power—with the aim of accelerating the pace and increasing the potential of scientific research. “Generally the pace of medical research is glacial compared to what I’m used to in the Internet,” Brin says. “We could be looking lots of places and collecting lots of information. And if we see a pattern, that could lead somewhere.” In other words, Brin is proposing to bypass centuries of scientific epistemology in favor of a more Googley kind of science. He wants to collect data first, then hypothesize, and then find the patterns that lead to answers. And he has the money and the algorithms to do it.