On 25 May 2023, Neuralink tweeted
Clinical trials and studies conducted in the United States (with some exceptions) are required to be registered on clinicaltrials.gov, but as of market creation I have not found any record of the study and Neuralink PR has not clarified their comments despite numerous requests.
Related Bounty:
This market will resolve YES if:
Record of a clinical study by Neuralink or an affiliated Responsible Party for testing neural implants on human subjects appears on clinicaltrials.gov before midnight on 31 Dec 2024.
This market will resolve NO if:
Record of a clinical study by Neuralink or an affiliated Responsible Party for testing neural implants on human subjects does not appear on clinicaltrials.gov before midnight on 31 Dec 2024
This market will resolve N/A if:
It turns out the study was actually registered in 2023.
In the event the FDA is dissolved, "FDA" will mean whatever bureau or agency is responsible for regulating medical devices (if any).
Related questions
@OneGuy - correct, market is regarding if/when FDA approved trial that Neuralink announced will be registered on the gov site. I would like to point out that this market and the related bounty are a bit of a package and you should check both out.
The backstory to this Rube Goldberg of a market is... I made a trade on a different market that I thought was WAY too confident regarding when Neuralink would announce that they've successfully implanted a device in a human. At the time of the bet (2023) all that had been announced was Neuralink's tweets that they had gotten FDA approval and the study brochure that you linked. I wanted to get a better knowledge base for the question before I placed a bet and poked around public records. When I failed to find official records of FDA approval, I started to wonder if Neuralink's announcement was PR smoke and mirrors, a tactic used by other Musk companies. Many other articles by media sources indicated that they hadn't found any records either and noted a distinct lack of followup or additional information from Neuralink led me to downgrade the likelihood of YES. Fast-forward to earlier this month, I got pinged by another user regarding my bet. I did another search of public records and still didn't find anything, but decided to outsource some of my uncertainty. I made the assumption that IF Neuralink did have FDA approval, then a record would pop up on clinicaltrials.gov. For all the traders betting YES (to implantation by 2024), a record popping up on the site would also have a high probability offering an incentive of almost certain profit (financial incentives - highly effective). To help me resolve the market, I created a bounty (another financial incentive) to anyone who could find the record. If someone actually found the record, then the study design would give info on when researchers planned to implant the device which would help me calibrate my bet in the first market which could help me (I thought) sweep all the Muskians. However, I made a critical error on when I thought Neuralink created their patient registry which meant my assumed patient enrollment timeframe was...completely off.
found them on clinicaltrials when I was looking for something concrete to resolve other markets but nothing published for the actual trial. any idea at what point in the process an investigator usually publishes these things?
@shankypanky I remember looking through clinical trials a few weeks ago and finding this but is there any indication that it’s neuralink?
@Bayesian it came up on my search as Neuralink but now that I'm back at my computer and looking more deeply I'm not convinced, sorry for the false alarm (when will I learn not to do everything on the move?)
I find it really frustrating that there doesn't seem to be anything official anywhere for Neuralink tbh. they're so lax on their Twitter/blog/web/etc posting.
@shankypanky - disclaim: I am not a medical researcher
AFAIK, with exceptions, studies are required to be registered as part of the study application process.