Scientists are threatening to boycott Europe’s Human Brain Project

Last year, the European commission launched a 10-year, $1.6 billion project to create a supercomputer simulation of the human brain, dubbed the Human Brain Project. Now, nearly 200 prominent scientists are threatening to boycott the project, saying it has gone badly off track and may be doing real damage to the study of neuroscience. The scientists lay out their concerns in an open letter, taking issue with the project’s “overly narrow approach, leading to a significant risk that it would fail to meet its goals.” The project is currently undergoing a scheduled review, and the group believes the review will unearth “substantial failures… concerning the quality of the governance demonstrated.” While the project has added immense new funding to the field, the researchers worry that the singleminded focus on supercomputer simulation is premature, and detracts from more foundational neuroscience research that would be more useful at this stage.

The world’s largest project to unravel the mysteries of the human brain has been thrown into crisis with more than 100 leading researchers threatening to boycott the effort amid accusations of mismanagement and fears that it is doomed to failure. The European commission launched the €1.2bn (£950m) Human Brain Project (HBP) last year with the ambitious goal of turning the latest knowledge in neuroscience into a supercomputer simulation of the human brain. More than 80 European and international research institutions signed up to the 10-year project. But it proved controversial from the start. Many researchers refused to join on the grounds that it was far too premature to attempt a simulation of the entire human brain in a computer. Now some claim the project is taking the wrong approach, wastes money and risks a backlash against neuroscience if it fails to deliver. In an open letter to the European commission on Monday, more than 130 leaders of scientific groups around the world, including researchers at Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and UCL, warn they will boycott the project and urge others to join them unless major changes are made to the initiative. The researchers urge EC officials who are now reviewing the plans to take a hard look at the science and management before deciding on whether to renew its funding. They believe the review, which is due to conclude at the end of the summer, will find “substantial failures” in the project’s governance, flexibility and openness.