Scientific purposes for distributed computing is now being explored on gaming devices, according to Seed. Sony’s ironically named “cell” chip will be working on how the study of proteins in disease:

Volunteers would download a program giving access to the PlayStation’s superfast Cell chip, which the researchers would use when the gamer is not playing. The processed information would then be sent back via the Internet. […] “A piece of research in this field could typically take up to five years–using the processing of PlayStation 3 could potentially reduce this to just three months,” [Stanford Professor Vijay] Pande said in a statement.

It seems that over 400,000 PS3 units have already sold in just a few weeks time and another 600,000 are expected to sell by the end of the year. Wow. That’s a lot of processing power if you can harness it together. But my first question is how does someone opt-in to the research? In other words, how does a PS3 owner distinguish the good causes from the bad?