The marketing and salesmanship of the Human Brain Project may have been a little too successful for its own good. On one hand, the idea that simply building a

The marketing and salesmanship of the Human Brain Project may have been a little too successful for its own good. On one hand, the idea that simply building a giant brain simulation would be possible or scientifically useful is not currently realistic. However, I don't think they (Markram et al.) are that naive. In reality, the project is composed of a lot of different subprojects, in simulation, neuromorphic computing, mapping/characterizing mouse and human brains and doing actual neuroscience, theory, applications to human disease, even philosophy and ethics, etc. see: https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/discover/the-project/sub-projects https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/discover/the-project/sub-pr... and their list of publications so far https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/science/publications https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/science/publications It's a huge umbrella for neuroscience funding that they marketed to the EU under the grand vision of simulating the brain. Whether or not this kind of marketing/funding mechanism is an optimal way to do the best science is a very legitimate issue to debate. But the implication (which the HBP brought upon themselves..) that a bunch of crackpots have been given a billion dollars to buy supercomputers and run nonsensical simulations is an oversimplification.