"Peter's previous startup vCIS was bought by ISS in 2002. It was...

"Peter's previous startup vCIS was bought by ISS in 2002. It was shutdown and written off in 2003."
OK. Peter made a successful company worth being acquired. Next.

"Before 2002 Peter was a junior academic in New Guinea.AFAIK He has never published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal."
OK. He worked at ISS 2002 - 2004. In 2004, he started working on BrainChip, publishing and granting the first digital neuromorphic chip patent, which became the company's first granted patent and has received 25 patent citations by leading technology players in the industry. Next.

"Robert Mitro has founded and sold quite a number of tech companies that don't seem to have much subsequent success."

• Vovida Networks, founded in February 1999 as a US and Canadian developer of a Linux-based carrier class soft-switch, which was acquired by Cisco Systems [FORTUNE 500] in November 2000
• Co-founder, vCIS Technology [Peter's company, past success], founded in Australia, migrated to the US in 2001 as a behavior analysis and malicious code security software company, which was acquired by Internet Security Systems in October 2002
• Co-founder, Telverse Communications, founded in August 2000 as an advanced services ASP focused on wholesale communications services for carriers, and was acquired in July 2003 by Level 3 Communications
• Co-founder, Caneum, Inc. a public company whose charter is to acquire micro cap technology and software companies in the US and India, to provide both onshore and offshore IT and BPO outsource services
• Co-founder, Chairman & CEO, WindSpring, formerly Zentronix, Pty. Ltd., founded in Australia, that developed a Data Miniaturization Technology for the Mobile, GPS Navigation and High Speed Storage markets
• Chairman & CEO, STEP Labs a Silicon Valley venture-backed acoustics software and acoustics design services company for high performance speech communications and reliable voice recognition performance for men and machines; which was acquired by Dolby Laboratories in April 2009.
• President & CEO, Rosum Corporation, a venture backed hybrid TV-GPS location technology Company that needed leadership to position the firm for an asset sale or merger, which culminated in a sale to True Position.
• Chairman & CEO, BrainChip, Inc. which has invented ground-breaking neural pulse-based digital technology that learns autonomously exactly like a human brain. [What happens here? We will find out.]

So you've pointed out Robert is one hell of a success. Next.

"Robert Mitro is still being paid generously even though he doesn't appear to have any real role at BRN."
He appeared at the latest AGM. He is still doing work for the company, he does have a role. He will stopped being paid near August as he is not CEO anymore due to health issues. Next.

"BRNs finance advisor Arthur Lipper was banned for life by the SEC for fraud and misconduct. His suspension was reduced to 12 months years after he retired from stockbroking."
This much I can agree with. He was one of the advisors to BRN and is certainty an incredible guy with an incredible career in finance however, there were incidents in the 1960's. IMO, don't know how relevant those incidents are to BRN.