The Philip Low account of Elon Musk is likely fabricated

In response to this post on this subreddit, I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I spent some time looking up this Philip Low guy. 

The first thing that tipped me off to his likely fictional account was the fact that he responded to my comment on his Facebook post within minutes. I remarked, “I follow industry news closely and I have never heard of NeuroVigil until this very moment. I feel like this may be the point of this post.”

He snapped back “You must not follow it very closely then,” and included a link to a news story. Well — not a news story, a paid news wire link. This was the press release title:

NeuroVigil, World’s Most Valuable Neurotech, Launches iBrain™ in US

I recommend you read it for some laughs, but here are some highlights with my commentary: 

sold 1.4% of its stock for more than $85 million, valuing the company at over $6 Billion in the highest Series B financing in History by a margin of $4.5 Billion, at over 12 times Facebook’s Series B valuation.

This is just unbelievable.  

The invitation-only financing itself, with 27 Strategic Investors, including a major Hospital, a leading University, an American Super Angel, 3 elite VCs, 5 pioneering Clinics and 7 top Law Firms, who favored backing scalable non-invasive brain technology over limited and invasive ones, only took 24 minutes to close.

If you have ever read an actual Silicon Valley fundraising news story, you’ll know that the press release always includes a quote someone at from the most notable VC firm in the round, yet there is not a single quote from a single investor in the release. 

The more I dug into it, the more I realized that before his “I have known Elon Musk on a deep level for 14 years,” Facebook post, every single story online about NeuroVigil is a paid press release. 

Here are some more tidbits from this one:

The project was initiated at the request of late NeuroVigil advisor Stephen Hawking, in case he became locked-in

This is again just silly, and more “famous scientist” name dropping. 

is one of NeuroVigil’s 48 granted patents (the company has another 25 immediately pending applications) was fast-tracked by the USPTO

This guy really wants you to think he has a lot of patents. 

DSS was initially developed by Dr. Low when he was a graduate student at the Salk Institute on the personal recommendation of Francis Crick, late Nobel Laureate of DNA fame (who had seen Dr. Low’s work at Harvard Medical School when he was a teenager), 

Association with fame is a recurring theme in these stories. The more of the press releases I read, the more I was reminded of the story of “The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno.” This is a famous story about the satirist Aretino, who, seeking to escape obscurity, wrote and distributed a pamphlet making fun of Pope Leo X. Pope Leo X invited Aretino to meet him, which cemented Aretino’s fame.

This seems similar to Philip Low: he is taking aim at the biggest, most famous person he can, and actual journalists are writing credulous stories about it. 

Dr. Low, who has opted to decline stock incentives for himself since 2009 – he initially turned down VCs and government funding and slept in his San Diego office and grew the company organically with less than $5 million in investment over 17 years and holds between 80 and 90% of the stock - and a salary since 2017

There is a lot of effort in these press releases to appear as some kind of benevolent genius who refuses to be paid for his work. 

NeuroVigil was also named as one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Health Care and The New York Times

This is just not true. Any mention of this Times article online is purely in Low’s paid press releases. EDIT: This claim appears to be true — the roundups in question were written in 2011 and 2012.