About Google plans to shoot the moon

According to Google, who three weeks ago заявил the launch of its «Moon Shot project», has already passed some authoritative publications. But I have not yet authoritative edition, so I can afford to comment on the news with a significant delay. Note also matured because of any one publication I have not seen what seems to me the most important thing in this story.

To start with, duplicate news, because you may not yet have heard of. Google said that begins "the most ambitious and complex scientific project in history." The project is to explore the 175 healthy people and, based on this study, to establish a "level of human health" (whatever that means). Ie Google wants to know how to look healthy person, what should be the "norm." I understand that all this sounds very vague. It is necessary to bring the wording of some measurable goals. But I do not, because Google has not provided anything like that.

After Google announced that he was going to bring happiness to mankind, the scientific community has great rebelled. Craig Venter , who is going to sequence the genomes of 1,000,000 (not only human, but also bacteria in humans) almost called guglovtsev children, saying that they make “детский small step, much less than what we do ".

A publication «MIT Technology Review» not like comparing Google release the project with a mission to the moon. In this connection, they деликатно google reminded that this represented the flight. They also drew attention to the biography of the leader Google release the project. It turns out, is co-founder of "California Institute of health and longevity." Sounds impressive, but in fact it turned out that the institution - a luxury spa, which offers a session akupuntury and healthy cooking lessons.

In general, Google got a little (but in a good, should get to more), because it is not necessary immodestly PR in an area where much more serious people are working on a much more serious projects (remember more, for example, about 100 000 Genomes Project ).

However, there is a Google release a project that worrying me more than scale, disproportionate level of public relations.

This is an attempt to go from the norm, rather than the pathology. The notion of rules at the level of biomarkers should be much broader than the concept of pathology. I think that the study only healthy people will not let google finally understand should look like a healthy person. Unless, of course, they are not going to explore all the healthy people on earth.

Photo taken from here: blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/25/meet-the-google-x-life-sciences-team/


Source: habrahabr.ru/post/233591/