That being said, Musk does seem like a vaguely inappropriate addition to the Society. His wikipedia page suggests he doesn't have a PhD, doesn't do any research and is involved in military matters for an army foreign to the UK. He's obviously being included because he has lots of money and it isn't clear to me if that is proper or not.
But the article does not talk about Musk's political opinion per se. The concerns would have been totally the same if Musk was acting the same way but involving himself with a different political ideology.
The concerns seem to be: 1) Musk is aggressive towards his fellow scientists, 2) Musk is supporting and spreading anti-science things, 3) Musk is pushing for anti-science practices in his own scientifically linked activities (such as not following the steps that guarantee good science in clinical trials).
The article mentions that Musk is getting more political. However, the message is not "being political is the reason why he should be excluded", the message is "while it is possible to be political and continue to adhere to the scientific practice, what we see is that Musk gets more and more anti-science because he gets more and more political".
To actively stir up trouble and misrepresent other scientists, and to perform experiments outside recognised ethical norms as Musk does, is much much worse.
And also very obviously a violation of the quoted rules, and brings the society into disrepute.
> Although most Fellows are elected on the basis of their scientific contributions, others are nominated on the basis of "wider contributions to science, engineering or medicine through leadership, organisation, scholarship or communication". [Italics in original.]
But yes, you hit the nail on the head about Musk being within their supposed scope, but a disastrously bad fit for their org. Making him a Fellow (back in 2018) was a self-serving idiot move by the Society. And now the Wages of Dim are adding up.
>Fellows - The Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship made up of many of the world’s most eminent scientists, engineers, and technologists.
Maybe he isn't a scientist but he is an engineer/technologist. If you put "greatest living engineer" into google you can guess who pops up.
This is something I’ve noticed more and more: there are essentially two very different ways to look at rules of various kinds (including laws).
Some people focus on consequences, and have a mental model along the lines of “if I do X, Y could realistically happen to me”. When they read the Statutes and Code of Conduct of the RS they see literally nothing of note, because there are no realistic consequences.
Other people essentially see rules as expressions of the will of some abstract entity, in this case the RS, and feel honor-bound to comply with them or at least take them into account. The consequences are not very important to them. When they read the CoC of the RS they come way with a lot of limits on their behavior.
We used to live in a world where most people who could aspire to be a FRS were clearly in the latter category. We don’t any more. IMHO we therefore need to adjust the rules so that the two categories of people come way with similar mental models of them.
I'd imagine the RS people actually probably tended more towards the former in the early days. There was more of an aristocratic bent and the more vigorous a scientific body is the less respect it has for established rules - more than one of the good scientists from back when were also legit heretics (I've been reading the wiki page for Newton, for example - or the grave robbing doctors).
This is hopefully incredibly obvious stuff, but unfortunately during the covid era "trust the science" was used to mean "my particular policy views are objectively correct and above criticism", and "antivax" targeted at people who had a vaccine themselves, but just did not believe it should be coerced on others
And is it still controversial to say that the efficacy of covid vaccine was a lot more disappointing than we were basically all expecting? Despite the revisionism of "well we never said that" (even when they did). Or that the apocalyptic predictions of lockdown-lifting were just a tiny bit overstated
People interested should look at The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn.
To quote from Wikipedia: Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in science in which scientific progress was viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of conceptual continuity and cumulative progress, referred to as periods of "normal science", were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science.
What exactly is a "consensus study"?
"Our goal in this study was to use an online Delphi technique to see whether it was possible to achieve consensus among professionals on appropriate criteria for identifying children who might benefit from specialist services"
"These responses [from experts] were synthesised by the first two authors, who then removed, combined or modified items with a view to improving consensus ... The resulting consensus statement is reported here"
This is what she thinks of as her best scientific work! It's not even science at all, just emailing a bunch of people trying to get them to agree to things and anytime someone doesn't agree she "synthesizes" them out of the picture.
No wonder she hates Musk. The Royal Society is far better off without people like this. It's not like Musk would care if it booted him out anyway!
To steal a good part from wikipedia: Scientific knowledge is best established by evidence and experiment rather than argued through authority[13][14][15] as authority has no place in science.[14][25][26] Carl Sagan wrote of arguments from authority: "One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority.' ... Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.
You can't compare him to figures like Newton and Hooke, who made both their names and their living from science.
Not disagreeing with the rest of your post, just making a minor nitpick - didn't Newton actually spend most of his time on alchemy and at the Royal Mint? He definitely made his name from science (or math & science as I prefer to think of it). But his living? I don't know about that.
Just because you put it in PDF doesn't make it something more.
People, evidence is, should be better educated in the History and Philosophy of Science (and in Mathematics and in Logic). It should be part of the mandated curriculum.
Even if you think Musk is a genius, it seems hard to label him as a scientist (instead of a CEO of science-related companies).
I wish there was a way to moderate our modern discourse to be closer to finding ways forward together, rather than dividing ourselves further. Elon’s entire schtick these days is to move faster than regulatory bodies can align. I hoped for an attempt at amending the RS statutes for clarity and boundaries, rather than resignation from the battle entirely. Perhaps as proof that some boundaries can be reactive to anyone regardless of influence.
I can’t think of many causes worth fighting for that can be won through resignation, certainly never within research or scientific contexts.
That seems to have been easy, but removing him now...oh...well....so difficult.
Similarly how easy it was to suck up to Russian billionaires in London and so difficult to sanction them when things went sour. We knew they were crooks back then but lots of people benefited from ignoring it.
It isn't by membership of a learned society, it isn't if they are working at a university. There is no simple way for a general person to know if somebody is a scientist.
Famously Newton was a complete and utter egomaniac nut job, as well as being one of the most gifted men to ever live. For example, the Leibnitz Newton debate - where surprisingly the royal society concluded in favour of Newton, while Newton was the head of the royal society.
Maybe 100 years from now, we will have letters complaining that the same illustrious society that Elon Musk (the man who revolutionised space travel) was once a member of, now houses so and such, who said x verifiably untrue statement.
Perhaps that’s why my feeling is that the best “solution” may actually be to loosen up the Code of Conduct so that the OP doesn’t feel honor-bound to act with curtesy towards Elon.
This article criticizes Musk for spreading misinformation that goes against scientific views, in particular on climate change.
DISCLAIMER: I've worked 2 years on climate insurance, as a data scientist tasked with measuring the risks of extreme weather events and how they change with global warming. I've worked on Hurricanes (general name is Tropical Cyclones), Frost, and River flooding.
What are the damning examples of Musks's misinformation cited in the article?
The worst I can find (except for having a jet, which all billionaires do) is under the title "Downplaying the climate emergency", where the article quotes a Guardian article. In there, the most damning thing Musk has said is: "Musk has praised Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful, as “a very promising candidate” despite Ramaswamy calling the climate change agenda a hoax. Musk responded to Ramaswamy on X about the climate crisis saying: “It is possibly overstated in the short term, but we should be concerned about it long term.”"
Does that warrant a witch hunt? Is it even false?
Many media like the Guardian (cited many times in her article) like to announce short-term climatic Ragnarok, for instance increased risk of hurricanes[0].
And they cite short-term "limits" like reaching the threshold of 1.5°C additional average global temperature compared to pre-industrial era.
But these media mix up all climate risks in their Ragnarok, which makes their prophecies invalid. For instance on hurricanes: the risk of hurricanes could be REDUCED because of global warming [2] (frequency goes down, intensity goes slightly up).
In fact, as we're nearing the 1.5°C "limit" [1], most of the doom warnings seem to have been invalid, except for precise heat-related risks like droughts and wildfires.
At least until 2024, Musk has been less wrong than the Guardian cited so often by this article. So should we remove this scientist from the Royal Society because she spreads misinformation? Oh well, it's already done.
My point is PLEASE ONLY TRY TO CANCEL PEOPLE UNDER GOOD REASONS, because the perception by Republicans/Right-wingers that Democrats/Ecologists are hysteric is what truly undermines the West's response to climate change.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-w... [1]: https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/global-temperature-likely-... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01388-4
This statement is clearly relevant to a scientific society. It is not just about unrelated bigotry by a fellow of that society.
Does that mean that everything Kennedy writes and says is the true gospel? Of course it doesn't nor does it need to. What it does say is that Fauci is not the person I'd choose as a representative for how to do science and that prosecuting the man sounds like a good idea. After all, if he is innocent he has nothing to fear, right? Let this cesspit be opened and let those who are shown to have to have abused their power, misled the public and acted for personal gain and against the trust put in them by the public be dealt with. In short, let The Science™ be exposed for what it is, a sham. Let the trust in lower-case science, scientists and the scientific method be restored by exposing the charlatans who sought to abuse the former's standing for their own purposes.
Fauci was close with the EcoHealth Alliance. He tried to hide gain of function research. There are a lot of criticism to this NGO, "including a joint letter signed by 77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies." (Wikipedia).
To the public Fauci straight up lied by promoting the vaccine as safe and effective, while he did not have the evidence to support that (and most likely did know that pregnant women in the trail had a lot of "spontaneous abortions", but recommended it for pregnant women anyway).
While I'd be the last person to defend Elon (he prevented unionization in Tesla, which he so get jail time for imho), I do think that it's time to prosecute Fauci. He seems to have been complicity in the AZT debacle.
Sticking it in a pronoun joke is something we should not cry over, it's just a joke.
This is incorrect information
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10152171/
Pregnant women are at higher risk of getting COVID which is liked to preterm birth
The part about abortions sounds like a blatant conspiracy theory.
There are some indications that the rules around gain of function research were not followed in some cases. I certainly think that merits investigating and I'm partial towards prohibiting most gain of function research. Doesn't mean publicly attacking Fauci is any reasonable way of doing this.
While that is relevant to a scientific society, I think it's worth taking a good hard look on whether its wise to take a side on that, other than maybe denounce gain-of-function research.
To me, it sounds like "Sure, Musk pooped in his hand and thrown it to the speaker during the conference, but the speaker made a sign mistake in their equation". If someone is saying that this attitude is awful, it does not mean that this person is pretending that the sign mistake did not occur and should not be corrected.
And punishing people for disputing the current "truth", and criticizing sacred cows, would go directly against the RS's principles. "Nullius in verba"
[1] Yes, he is one
[2] A notion which itself goes against the principles of scientific inquiry
I've not heard of all bar one of Trump's new and previous cabinets combined, and the one I have heard of, I only know about due to the brain worms. Zero of Biden's, zero of Obama's. Possibly two of GWB's?
I've only heard of two of the people who work at SpaceX, and that's Musk and Shotwell none of the rest; likewise none of those under Musk at X, TBC, Neuralink, Tesla, Starlink, Solar City.
Someone blogged about why they resigned from the society, someone posted the link here, enough upvoted it for you to be engaged enough to reply.
Fame is just being noticed — and you noticed — but merely getting into the group says they must have been top quality in the first place.
Of course it is relevant. As your post admits the author's recognized in some community that led them to post such things. If it weren't for their relative fame, their letter would be ignored. My take is about the relative fame of them vs Musk. Both are members of Royal Society, so that credential is moot. What else does the author have to make their case? Why should one listen to them, and take their opinion seriously, over Musk, who is the first and only one in the world who has caught rocket boosters in the history of the world? What is the author's accomplishments?
Is there genuine curiosity (even dare I say wrongthink) left in the RS or is it just another polite social club for people to gather and feel smug about the consensuses they've formed.
Do you want to take a risk of going down the history as the society who estranged Galileo? Even the haters secretly know that the likelihood of Musk being remembered in history books is higher than a random FRS. In fact, that's likely why they are jealous and eager to write such letters.
It's a society of scientists - why would it admit or tolerate liars? Spreading obviously and easily provable misinformation online isn't "non-mainstream opinion" - it's just lying. Why would that be tolerated?
I think Musk is a perfect fit among modern era scientists and the author has no place there with his outdated views.
Idea: "scientists must focus on research that benefits humanity rather than financial gain or publication metrics" (Tamara Elzein)
He is now in the time for his /excesses/ to be called out. Research and science are great; the replication crisis and wasted time/effort were not. Excess should be called out.
Elon is directionally the agent calling out the excesses of the covid era (that's the time period Elon began his shift rightward) and he'll make some missteps - like the anti fauci stuff - but by and large a course correction is needed. Elon is mainly fighting for his Rockets to go up faster and he'll back whichever horse gets him there quickest. So do I pay attention to the guy launching the future or the guy letting his heart bleed out in a blogpost?
I do feel worried about the Britons. Their economy is slumping, cultural prestige waning (it'll be gone by GEN alpha), and I've heard reports they lock up people over facebook posts. I know not all of those things are 100% true but if even their Royal Society members can't seem to avoid falling to political squabble and see the long horizons of history, I worry for their future.
