TLDR - not sure why I'm getting fired up about this. Thanks for your interest, here's a long form answer.

To be clear - I think referring to the sum of Neuralink's in vivo work as "trials" is a misnomer. They are doing basic R&D. A "trial" is when you have a device or drug that you believe will be functional to fix something. It's ironic, because the very thing that frustrates me to no end about how Elon Musk presents Neuralink to the public is biting him here. They are still a huge WORLD away from doing "trials". At this point, they're probably trying to get an IDE ("investigational device exemption") to begin to _test_ their devices in humans, which, in the case of brain-machine interfaces is still a huge step from having a clinical trial to treat something (and potentially get FDA approval).

Qualifications - I have about 20 years of experience in neural interfaces on the academic side (including in regulation of animal welfare). (I've even given a talk at Neuralink about my research). The Neuralink situation is really annoying from an academic perspective - they are doing really amazing tech development. What they presented last week in pigs and monkeys appears beyond what anyone currently can do reliably in the lab (of course it isn't peer reviewed). They have really good scientists that put up with the ridiculousness of working for Elon and are excited to advance knowledge and potentially impact health. The world of brain medicine has been stuck for three decades in a zone where we know (from neuroscience experiments in animals) that things like the symptoms of Parkinson's disease are complex multidimensional active processes whose treatment could be improved with high-bandwidth brain interfaces. But without those interfaces to use to develop the technology in people, there's no way to actually get to clinical trials. I think our hope with Neuralink is that Elon might fund them until they get past that point, and then there would be a virtuous cycle of data leading to discovery leading to treatment, but even at the ridiculous pace he's been driving them at, this is still a decadal problem. DARPA have invested $100Ms in this and still barely cracked it. And unlike the other scenarios he's worked in, there is no market for high bandwidth brain machine interfaces, and it's definitely worrying whether he'll lose interest when he finally realizes how hard the problem is from a market perspective.

I'm not a fanboy, I think there are definitely issues at Neuralink, and a cowboy attitude about animal care may be an issue. One of my acquaintances that no longer works there is a vet, so I wouldn't be surprised. ALL THAT SAID, the way that rodent experiments ("1500 ANIMALS!!!") and regulatory strategy decisions ("WRONG SIZE DEVICES IN PIGS"), are put together with a few actual tragic errors (vetbond leaking into some craniotomies and pigs implanted in the wrong spinal space), without acknowledgement that they have actually successfully implanted flexible probes into other pigs and monkeys for longer than has ever been done before (keeping in mind that the animals often are euthanized when they're data isn't good anymore) gives me the sense that this is a hit piece, and that the people that are piling on either must have strong opinions about animal research in general or don't really understand what the company is doing.