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More than 180 neuroscientists have signed an open letter to the European Commission calling on it to reconsider the technical goals and oversight of one of the world’s largest brain-mapping projects, predicting it is likely to fail. The European Union agreed last year to invest more than one billion euros in the Human Brain Project (HBP), a 10-year effort involving dozens of research institutions to create a simulation of how the human brain works, using supercomputers. But according to a letter released by dissenting scientists, the project is doomed by opaque management and the pursuit of goals not widely shared by neuroscientists. “We believe the HBP is not a well-conceived or implemented project and that it is ill suited to be the centerpiece of European neuroscience,” the letter says.