Neuralink Should Make Your Brain Hurt, Seriously.
Almost a quarter of a century ago, managers of the legendary Bell Labs reported several breakthroughs that could have changed technology forever: Within a year one of their young researchers named Jan Hendrik Schön had succeeded in creating an organic super-conductor, a laser built from organic materials and the first molecular level transistor. Of course, as it turned out later, none of this was true.¹
The scandal was a serious hit to Bell Lab’s reputation but it did not happen out of context: The dotcom bubble was in the process of popping and Bell Labs, owned by Lucent Technologies at the time, was — even if practical application appeared remote — desperate to present groundbreaking successes that could rekindle investors’ trust. For Lucent it was publish or perish, literally.
We are currently finding ourselves again in a tech bubble that has seen private and public valuations beyond any imagination, mainly around the future financial prospects of artificial intelligence and robotics, and again much of it banking on optimism for yet unrealized practical applications.
And where there is hype we naturally find Elon Musk..
And where there is hype we naturally find Elon Musk who recently reminded us that one of his many ventures includes Neuralink, a neurotechnology company with the aim of creating interfaces between the human brain and computers.
On the 19th of February he rather casually mentioned in a Twitter/X space that the first Neuralink patient is alive and well and is able to “move a mouse with his thoughts”². That was the first Neuralink related update since it had been reported some weeks prior that the company had allegedly started with clinical trials on humans (via a tweet).³
And that was basically it, that’s all the information. It was however enough to set the media machine into motion. I rather take it with a shovel of salt.
.. on the same day Reuters had been awarded with the Polk Award the for their critical reporting on Musk’s various companies ..
The timing of the announcement seems hardly a coincidence: It occurred on the same day Reuters had been awarded the Polk Award for their long-running critical reporting on Elon Musk’s various companies⁴, which could explain why Musk’s statement would have been made up on the go.
I am — obviously — not working in neurotechnology and I am in no position to accuse Neuralink of fraud or — if you want to call it that — misrepresentation. In fact it is probably not as what they claim to have achieved is not new, with implants like this being around for at least two decades.
Treating it like it’s magic
Real science has a tough time in the media and rarely makes it into the news on CNN, MSNBC or to the front page of the New York Times. That is because science, with its slow review process and scepticism, often taking years before a conclusive results emerge, does obviously not make good and catchy headlines.
Of course all of this is different if the word “Musk” can appear in the headline: The media has long struggled with Musk’s techno-bubble about the full-self driving (FSD) and robotics (“Optimus”) and rarely bothers to consult experts in the field.
Neuralink however is worse because it is not Tesla. Musk has over the years ventured into more obscure business areas: While most people can fathom cars or even rockets, neurotechnology is a field very few outside the medical community even remotely understand, with neurotechnology seen as a bit of a dark art, not to mention slight body horror many will feel when thinking of brain implants.
The area of research is complex enough that we may wish to hear from the actual experts but we have become so used to bold and hyperbolic statements by prominent CEOs (let is be OpenAI’s Sam Altman or Google‘s Sundar Pichai, and of course Elon Musk) rather than the researchers and scientists themselves.
Science by press release, while increasingly common, is not science.
“Science by press release .. is not science” write Jonathan D. Moreno and Arthur Caplan³ about Neuralink, but here we do not even have a press release: In fact, Neuralink’s blog has not been updated since September 2023, when they were asking for volunteers for their clinical trial to come forward.
Mysteries and ethical failures
Neuralink is of course not an academic institution, it operates as a private company, and hence is exposed to little scrutiny or oversight.
As mentioned despite the futuristic premise Neuralink’s work itself is not as revolutionary⁹ as Musk tries to make it appear. Nevertheless it shrouds itself in mystery and shown questionable practices: They have run controversial tests on primates that have sparked an federal probe⁵, does not does “not keep precise records on the number of animals tested and killed” according to reports⁵. They are now recruiting volunteers for their human trial directly via their website.
Their team has published little, and reveals even less about their scientific staff: I found a paper⁶ from 2019 that attempts to explain Neuralink’s basic approach but is simply credited to “Elon Musk & Neuralink”. It should go without saying that crediting a scientific paper to someone who likely had little to nothing to do with it (leaving the real contributors to the paper anonymous) is normally frowned upon.
Seriously ..
We can make fun about the Cybertruck all day but we should not loose sight of the fact that medical research is a different beast and should be treated as such, not as the product announcement nonsense we have become accustomed to. And it should be treated as clinical research overseen by someone who has been peddling⁷ medical misinformation for years⁸, repeatedly.
The Bell Labs scandal was a multi-layered failure. There was of course the root cause of deliberately faked and manipulated data but to an even greater extend it was a failure of oversight and a failure of the public to ask critical questions from the start. It had real world consequences: In her book about the Bell Labs scandal Eugenie Samuel Reich describes how Bell Labs “successes” negatively impacted research projects around the the world. Funding and resources were wasted and innocent academic careers were damaged.
Responsibilities
I think it is important that the medical research community starts ask questions about Neuralink and insists of talking to the people involved. And so should the media. The secrecy around their research affects those genuinely working in that field who follow scientific standards and ethics.
Musk is actively fighting regulatory oversight .. and this attitude should not be allowed to creep into medical research.
Musk can summon billions of investor money and proven to be a master in avoiding regulatory oversight, in many cases actively fighting it. This attitude should not be allowed to creep into medical research. It’s time that we are asking questions from the start, not years into the process.
This is not about if Neuralink is a fraud or not. It is about that we do not know but we should. Or at least people who know their field should be in a position to evaluate it.
It is about that we have nothing to go by to judge it. This is an ethical failure and it should make your brain hurt.
¹ If you want to learn more about the Bell Labs scandal I highly recommend “Plastic Fantastic — Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World” by Eugenie Samuel Reich, 2009
² Neuralink’s first human patient able to control mouse through thinking, Musk says — Reuters, 20 February 2024
³ The Neuralink Patient Behind the Musk — The Hastings Center, Caplan, Moreno , February 12, 2024
⁴ Reuters wins Polk Award for coverage of Elon Musk’s business empire — 19 Feb 2024
⁵ Musk’s Neuralink faces federal probe, employee backlash over animal tests — Reuters, 5 Dec 2022 (archived)
⁶ An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels — “Elon Musk & Neuralink” , 2019
⁷ Elon Musk is dangerously wrong about the novel coronavirus — The Verge
⁸ Elon Musk tweet boosts vaccine conspiracies targeting LeBron James’ son — BBC
⁹ Neuralink brain chip: advance sparks safety and secrecy concerns - Liam Drew, Nature, 23 February 2024
