The prestigious science academy is under pressure to boot its most controversial member.
The destructive antics of former genius Elon Musk have not impressed his fellow fellows of the world’s oldest scientific society.
With a petition to oust him gathering 2600 signatures so far from members and international scientists, the august Royal Society has called a meeting on 3 March to “discuss public pronouncements and behaviours of other fellows”, Nature reports.
Emeritus Professor Stephen Curry first published on his blog the letter he wrote to Royal Society president Professor Adrian Smith, enumerating the ways Musk has contravened its code of conduct and “grievously undermined” its reputation.
The administration has engaged in an “assault on scientific research”, seeking to “impose huge cuts in funding and a regime of censorship (particularly with regard to EDI and climate issues) that is a direct threat to freedom of expression and academic freedom”.
The Royal Society promotes diversity and inclusion commitments on its website.
Professor Curry accuses the society of hiding “behind its mantra that ‘Any issues raised in respect of individual fellows are dealt with in strict confidence’”. That’s not good enough, he says; in fact it’s a “failure of moral courage” to condone with its silence a man who is chainsawing scientific research in the name of deWokeifying America.
The Back Page fairly gags at the W word these days so that will be the last occurrence on this page.
Musk was made a fellow in 2018 for his work on space travel, electric cars and brain chips. The thought of trusting this man now with any one of those high-stakes endeavours feels like a throwaway line from a satirical near-future dystopian romp.
Last year 74 society fellows raised the alarm over his use of Twitter to promote misinformation, conspiracy theories, vaccine hesitancy and malicious attacks on former NIAID director Professor Anthony Fauci. This was not deemed against the society’s code, and two fellows resigned in protest.
Across the Atlantic, where hundreds of thousands of researchers have had the rug pulled with billions in summary cuts to their overhead funding, and are in limbo wondering whether a court’s restraining order will stick, there is palpable damage, uncertainty and chaos.
“Angst and anxiety and, to a certain extent, grief,” said CEO Sudip Parikh at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s conference in Boston at the weekend, to describe the mood among American scientists, as they try to purge words like “bias” and “advocate” and “women” from their grant applications.
Destroying everything that smacks of decency or respect towards anyone who isn’t a straight white man – even deleting the achievements of non-straight-white-men from history at agencies such as NASA – is the primary aim of this frolic, not the destruction of science per se, according to two people who spoke to The New York Times.
Kei Koizumi, a science advisor in the Biden administration, said science was “collateral damage” in the mission to obliterate diversity, equity and inclusion policies from government and research institutions.
Mary Woolley, president of non-profit medical research advocacy group Research America, said the administration was “not anti-science”, since scientists can still get the White House’s attention by emphasising that their work will boost US competitiveness.
Great. Big consolation, unless your research is the kind that takes a little longer to bear fruit of the greenback variety.
A society representative told Nature it had been 150 years since a fellow was expelled.
Maybe the sociopathic billionaire can break the streak – he’s breaking everything else.
P.S.: The FDA is the latest health-related body to go under the DOGE knife, with an unknown number of layoffs at the weekend, according to STAT – particularly in the AI regulation department. Doesn’t bode well for regulating them AI doctors.
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