That’s a very negative take on a very ambitious and important project.

Single neuron firing is important, but in the context of billions of other neuron and a connectivity scheme that implements trillions of connections, their influence is small. Generation of general connectivity models can allow us to focus research and modelling efforts on specific critical areas where small numbers of cells have a large effect, and that is where examining small groups or even single neurons will be most informative. Without connectivity, how can we choose which of the neurons to examine? Someday in the distant future we may have nanorobotic methods to for examining them all, but we need to do something to get us to that stage – there’s no point waiting until we can do everything!