"The acceptance rate of papers in these journals is around 90% (when you pay the hefty author fee)"
The journal says "At Frontiers, we publish all articles that are scientifically correct" [Frontiers blog, July 3, 2016]. The critical element here is "scientifically correct". The journal's assessment of scientific correctness will depend on the calibre of the reviewers. The abstract identifies the reviewers. They are (with a couple of links to biographies):
Dr Tomoki Arichi: Researchgate and Kings College London
Dr Sheffali Gulati: Researchgate and All India Institute Of Medical Sciences
I'm not in any position to judge the merits of the reviewers. You'll have to draw your own conclusions. I also note that the paper was submitted on 19-Feb-2018, so the review process has been long. Hopefully that means it was also comprehensive.
"drop-out rate of 60% in the study" – I will be very interested to see if the drop-out rate is similar in both arms, or predominantly in one arm. If roughly equal I would tend to regard the drop-out rate as representing the degree of difficulty in getting the subject to wear the device. The new design would hopefully produce an improvement here. If it's predominantly in the inactive arm I would seriously wonder if it were the result of the partial unblinding produced by the interim results at Oxford being so widely publicised, which you warned of back when the announcement was made. You also warned that it could cause issues with the FDA submission. That remains a risk, and the fact that you identified it is extra cause for concern.
The waters are still muddy not Neurotech International:
1) Carrick (and by implication, the Institute) has had his credibility questioned in the past.
2) The Journal has also had questions raised about its credibility.
3) We haven't yet seen the trial methodology so we can't judge its rigour.
4) We haven't yet seen the analysis of the results so we can't judge the size of the effect nor the confidence level.
I have bought a few more today, but in my opinion this is still a speculative investment at this stage.
