The two experiments mentioned involved 61 animals, so it's not 2 out of 1500 but at least 61 out of 1500. And I think it would not be unreasonable to assume that there are more cases than the ones explicitly documented in the article, given the immense time pressue Musk seems to be creating here.
The quote I see says, "staff accidentally implanted Neuralink’s device on the wrong vertebra of two different pigs during two separate surgeries".
The other issue mentioned in the Reuters article apparently has to do with testing different sizes/generations of their devices. Whether it's appropriate to sacrifice more animals to make sure the FDA is not confused by a submission is arguably not an ethical issue you can blame Neuralink for.
> Reuters identified four experiments involving 86 pigs and two monkeys that were marred in recent years by human errors.
and
> The mistakes leading to unnecessary animal deaths included one instance in 2021 when 25 out of 60 pigs in a study had devices that were the wrong size implanted in their heads
My figure added up the wrong events here, but the 86 pigs and 2 monkeys is the better figure anyway.
And it's not that it would confuse the FDA, if you implant the wrong device it reduces the information you get from the experiment as it is not exactly comparable to your other experiments. The article clearly states that they implanted the wrong size, so they made a mistake somewhere.
