My annoyance is with the articles presentation. It leads to the kind of analogies that you're making. I think the most clarifying thought I've had is that peopl

My annoyance is with the articles presentation. It leads to the kind of analogies that you're making. I think the most clarifying thought I've had is that people (and the article) are imagining that Neuralink is doing a clinical trial. Instead, they're developing at least 5 different bleeding edge technologies which are the needed precursor for making the device that one day might lead to a clinical trial. Imagine 5 teams with dozens of people working on different pieces that each require multiple rounds of in vivo testing. 1000 rodents in 4 years with 200 people all working independently is not particularly wild. And to clarify, "they don't know the number" is not accurate. Rather, the USDA requires exact reporting of the number of Animal Welfare Act protected animals (non rodents) and round numbers of rodents. These are published by the USDA. Neuralink may also report precise numbers as part of their annual report to NIH or AALAC, but these are not public. My frustration is that this is the scale of a small university's (like mine) research, and it's a shame to have actual mistakes linked to context-less numbers to make the situation appear bad.