I respect the author's principle-based approach but many of her arguments seem a little off. If the RS doesn't expel people for their politics, then it doesn't make sense to expel Musk for, essentially, concerns about his politics. And if you expel crotchety scientists for disagreeing with the scientific consensus there won't be any left. The RS motto is literally "Take nobody's word for it"; I don't see how Musk disagreeing with other's opinions could possibly be grounds for removing him.
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.
> If the RS doesn't expel people for their politics, then it doesn't make sense to expel Musk for, essentially, concerns about his politics.
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".
I understand where you're coming from but because of Covid and those years, using the shield of 'science' to disallow criticism is a little underhanded. Covid/Vaccines/Lockdowns are on the table of politics for the foreseeable future.
Not in the context of the royal society they aren't. Or they shouldn't be. That's kinda the point of its existence.
Did you even read it?
The letter specifically mentioned the way Musk had used his platform on X to make unjustified and divisive statements that served to inflame right-wing thuggery and racist violence in the UK.
I gather that at this point the Royal Society Council opted to consult a top lawyer to determine whether Musk's behaviour breached their Code of Conduct.
Whatever your ideology, you can't say in good faith they want him gone solely due to neutral principles of scientific integrity. Personally, I don't care much since I don't even understand why he got included in the first place.
Promoting peaceful debate is arguably a core aspect of scientific integrity. My impression is that the author would be just as miffed by someone spreading misinformation about GMOs that leads to left-wing thuggery against crop research institutes.
I feel similarly. I agree Musk doesn't belong in the RS, but I'd have said the same in 2018 (I missed the news). It's concerning that the author has only come to this realization now that Musk vocally disagrees with her political views. I don't consider that principled at all
It's not about that Musk disagrees with her political views, it's that he is being anti-scientific, pushing wrong scientific facts and so on to further his personal agenda, which happens to involve a lot of politics.
I took the time to read those Guardian links (sigh) and that's just misrepresentation.
Vaccines: almost nobody refutes the scientific basis behind vaccines (not even talking about mRNA vs traditional), but trusting vaccine admission means trusting powers that have historically been quite evil (cf Tuskegee syphilis study, MKUltra, contaminated blood scandals in Europe and Japan, etc...). Elon's "meme" isn't about said science and this article/post conflates the two.
Climate: I read the 2024 article and extracts from a mostly informal interview like
“If we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse,” said Musk, who is also chief executive of the electric car company Tesla. “We do over time want to move to a sustainable energy economy because eventually you do run out of oil and gas.
“We still have quite a bit of time … we don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that. Like, leave the farmers alone.”
, while not without faults, don't seem anti-scientific in any way to me. Trump's side seemed way more unhinged, from the few cherry-picked quotes in the article.
Misinformation on X: the usual "calling the other side fake news/disinformation/conspiracy theories and touting threat to democracy", not interesting in the least. Also, why is someone writing about that in the British Medical Journal??
tl;dr this is an ideological blog post amongst thousand of others.
The video that Musk posted with the vaccine efficacy numbers dropping from 100 to 50 is clickbait nonsense. As is the "shouldn't all the unvaccinated be dead" meme. On the myocarditis topic he consistently focused on the relatively tiny risks and brought up vaccines in the context of Bronny James for no reason other than to bait outrage. None of this befits a serious scientist such as the FRS aims to include in its ranks.
No, I agree with most of it, but that's what should have been written in the blog post and not by someone else on HN after the fact.
The meme, though, I wonder... I live in a country that wasn't as hardcore as some of the Commonwealth on the "forced vaccination" front so I don't identify with it, but there was certainly a lot of propaganda surrounding it in the wide world; on how people who refused were almost traitors shirking their civic duties.
> how people who refused were almost traitors shirking their civic duties
I wasn't quite that hardcore, but I did (and still do) find it difficult to accept refusals to vaccinate for seemingly little reason. It felt like some people were being stubbornly complicit in drawing out the pandemic and putting their contacts at higher risk. I guess it's a question of degree - how many lives does a collective behaviour need to save, before it becomes justified to mandate it?
Everything is ideological. But reading the excerpts from the RS Code of Conduct she posted, Musk's behavior does seem to go against it.
Also, you cannot deny that Musk has been amplifying conspiracy theories. Does not matter if he believes in them or just does it for the "lolz".
A conspiracy theory for one side is undeniable truth for the other. Not falling into relativist garbage, there's a difference between "conspiracy theories about everything from vaccines to race replacement theory to misogyny" and flat earth.
If it was just scientific consensus and politics, that would be one thing — while I share the author's opinion in these aspects, I recognise these aspects are not sufficient for such a response.
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.
The core of the OP’s argument as I see it is that the RS requires its fellows to treat other scientists with curtesy. Elon clearly doesn’t feel bound by that, but the OP does.
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.
Yeah, I'd class that as high- and low- status behaviour. One of the things that high-status people have to deal with is that they basically create the rules by their behaviour and actions. That leads to a certain disregard for what is written on-paper because they can write different things on it if they want to.
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).
> Yeah, I'd class that as high- and low- status behaviour.
Interesting. You mean it’s high-status to disregard rules that don’t have formal consequences?
I guess I’m a bit confused, in that we clearly used to have a society that operated much more on rules without formal consequences. E.g. here in Sweden our law books are absolutely filled with them. Obviously there must have been high-status people that took them seriously in the past, otherwise we wouldn’t have been a well functioning society.
Yes, the mistake was inviting him to be a fellow in the first place. Now he's in, the Society must follow its rules and precedents. At the very least, it shouldn't be seen to expel someone for political opinions or heterodox views on science. Some the of Royal Society's most notable members have had lunatic fringe ideas and they weren't thrown out.
The thing is neither climate change nor vaccines are political opinions or views. They are hard scientific facts and you are absolute moron if you try to twist them into political views.
Unfortunately, the expression 'hard scientific facts' does not represent general reality. Academically. (I.e.: "things are not that simple".)
Science informs policy, but it doesn't create or judge it. Science can help you predict the effects of vaccinating every adult in a population, but it can't say whether you should mandate that
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
> And is it still controversial to say that the efficacy of covid vaccine was a lot more disappointing than we were basically all expecting?
As "controversial" means "prolonged public dispute or debate", necessarily so.
But I think also incorrect compared to the scientific discussion at the time. Not necessarily false compared to the political discussion or the newspapers etc., but the actual researchers themselves, who understood the reports and didn't get all their information from misleading summarised headlines like the rest of us:
"""What that means is if you had a hundred people who got coronavirus, this vaccine would have prevented 95% of them. So if that same 100 people had been vaccinated, only five of them would have got coronavirus. And that's the number that I really look for to start off with.
Now, when all of these studies were being designed, they said that they wanted to be able to get a vaccine that had a vaccine effectiveness of greater than 30%. That was the number that they were targeting. If they had a vaccine effectiveness of greater than 30%, then this would be a good result.
And to have a vaccine effectiveness of 95%, that's huge. That's so much more than we ever could have hoped for. And it's such a big result.
And the other studies have also had really good vaccine effectiveness estimates.""" - https://www.numberphile.com/podcast/jennifer-rogers
> Or that the apocalyptic predictions of lockdown-lifting were just a tiny bit overstated
You reckon?
Emergency breaking is unpleasant, but it means you don't hit something that will decelerate you even harder.
It's a valid viewpoint, however membership to the royal society is judged via candidates having made 'a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science'. I would argue Elon is fully within scope, outside of the fact that I think Elon is not the slightest fit to the general ethos of that specific organization.
How is he within scope? At best he might have contributed to advancing engineering science, but is that really the case? Has he not rather merely financed engineering science and perhaps not even engineering science but just engineering practice?
From the blogpost: "wider contributions to science, engineering or medicine through leadership, organisation, scholarship or communication" He's clearly relevant based on contribution to engineering (maybe science too) through organization (maybe leadership, communication too).
This is the salient point. Musk is not a "science" person. He is no
Einstein or Newton. He has many good qualities, amongst them a broad
appreciation of engineering, commerce and motivating people. He is
ambitious. But Musk neither holds a PhD (I imagine he'd lack the
patience and focus) nor has any notable specialism. Like Gates and
Zuckerberg who both dropped out of their computer science degrees to
make money, Musk is another of this new breed of "technologist" who we
lionise as though they were "great scientists".
The Royal Society is a club for great scientists and it has erred by
expanding its definition of "contribution to science" to include
businessmen and financiers who contribute through money and influence.
> This is the salient point
No it's not lol. you just decided to ignore the criteria for membership and invent your own, like a phD being requisite (it is not.)
Also, to call Musk a "businessman" is reductive as hell. I know a lot of people have pressure to hate him because of political reasons, but be real for once.
The full quote:
> 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.
To quote him "Whereas previously he seemed to agree with mainstream scientific opinion"
Can someone please explain to me how we managed to get a whole generation of the western scientific thinkers who think the scientific method is consensus of scientific opinion? The author lists Isaac Newton, Hooke, Boyle . All of these prominent minds made scientific breakthroughs that didn't stick to the consensus views of the time.
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.
> People interested should look at
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.
The difference is that Elon Musk has not challenged scientific consensus by publishing revolutionary studies or conducting risky experiments, but rather by republishing inflammatory statements online. His actual achievements (including super-heavy rockets and electric cars) are largely independent from his unconventional views on vaccines, for instance.
You can't compare him to figures like Newton and Hooke, who made both their names and their living from science.
Elons success is in very large part due to challenging the status quo
Whats his unconvential views on vaccines? I am not convinced he has any. Could not find anything obvious at leadt
All politics aside, is it normal for business people to be elected to the royal society?
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).
Membership to the royal society is judged via candidates having made 'a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science'.
By thinking, or by spending money?
Seems you kind of need people who are capable and willing to do both. Not too many Bruce Wayne’s and Tony Starks outside the comic books and movies who are able to both think and spend.
Musk’s value to science and technological progress is not his scientific intellect. Musk’s value is his ability to invest gobs of money in smart people and be patient for years for the returns on his investment to occur…and to be willing to fail.
I’m sure he is an asshole and I don’t care what political tribe he follows. I watch rockets fly into space pretty much weekly from my backyard. Feels like every third car is a Tesla on the road. His investment patience has had value to society.
Bezos has tossed a lot of money towards space and did not get as far. Elon has absolutely earned his reputation.
In fairness, Blue Origin has had only a tenth to a half of the funding that SpaceX has had (depending on which sources you trust; figures vary widely). Yet they are hardly doing badly by any measure: they have an almost fully reusable sub-orbital spacecraft which has consistently and safely carried passengers, and they have a orbital rocket ready for testing next month. SpaceX are clearly the market leader, but this is partially because they are into the category of companies who can now convey profitable payloads for NASA/DoD, with the public funding which goes along with that.
Technologically, SpaceX are miles (per second!) ahead of Blue Origin, but in business terms there is perhaps not a great difference between them. First-mover's advantage doesn't often translate into return-on-investment!
> Elon has absolutely earned his reputation.
I think you will find that is exactly what the Royal Society have concluded!
Spending money on scientific endeavors that turn out to be successful typically requires thinking.
Does it? My conservative hypothesis is: it requires a good nose for good thinkers.
Having a good nose for good thinkers typically requires thinking.
I'm not so sure. I think there are people who can recognise talent by gut feel, without having much themselves.
a bunch of frontend developers are about to tell you you're wrong and Musk is actually an idiot
I 100% support that letter. Musk is a stain on the Royal Society.
I think the world at large today could use a few more people appealing to our better natures. For that, this is a wonderful statement.
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.
So some brown-nosers thought to pull Musk in because they thought it would get them some news and mentions and so on, possibly be financially advantageous in some way despite him not really being a scientist.
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.
The whole episode is a nice and timely reminder of the difficulty of the society as a whole in dealing with scientists and understanding which ones are good, which ones can be trusted, etc. Academic societies such as the RS help, but as this shows they are by no means perfect, and can be gamed and manipulated when the stakes are high enough. It is a real challenge though -- how do you trust a scientist without having to learn all the science they are telling you about?
Elon Musk is not a scientist. He employs scientists.
But do general people know who is a scientist and who isn't? How do they find out?
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.
[deleted]
I mean, the Royal Society has always been crazy, and full of provocative and crazy people. I'm not sure how you can have a group of geniuses without that.
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.
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. I think you have a good point.
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.
I really don't like this growing implication of scientists with political struggles orthogonal to their expertise.
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.
If you have read the article, it's not at all about that. But great job hiding behind your throw away account.
[flagged]
The Royal Society is important because it is where the UK government go when they need good advice on scientific issues. Many people in the US might think that their government doesn't need good advice on scientific issues but, as they will find out, they are wrong.
If so, why would one automatically assume Musk has the bad advice and the rest of them have good advice? It's awfully ironic as science is literally the process of demonstrating the widely-accepted wisdom (preeminent theory) wrong.
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.
> why would one automatically assume Musk has the bad advice
I don't think any of this is automatic. It's a considered response to the bias that Musk has recently demonstrated when discussing scientific topics.
>>non-mainstream opinions
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?
Why are they defending Fauci then?
Are they? They are objecting Musk posting provably wrong statements on social media, arguing that as a fellow of the RS he shouldn't do that - the statements are on a variety of topics, not just Fauci.
Let's take your word for it. Fauci is a fellow too. If they are so concerned about spreading truth, why don't they object to his provably false statements and unethical exclusion of NIH funding of scientists (proof in email records) he does not like and ask for his exclusion?
You very well know the answer to that.
>>You very well know the answer to that.
I genuienly honestly don't know.
It's generally the latter.
"How do you know" teaches us something; "how do you perceive it" does not.
[flagged]
Noble enough.
> Most of those I've spoken to agree that a serious breach of these principles was in 2022, when Musk tweeted: "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci", thereby managing to simultaneously offend the LGBTQ community, express an antivaxx sentiment, and put Fauci, already under attack from antivaxxers, at further risk.
This statement is clearly relevant to a scientific society. It is not just about unrelated bigotry by a fellow of that society.
Elons statements were obviously not aimed at Faucis role in vaccine discussions, but in his much more dubious role in gain-of-function research and especially covering up the origins of Covid.
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.
If it was Musk's intent (but I doubt it was the case, because it does not fit with a lot of other things that Musk did or said that show he is aiming at Faucci role in vaccine discussions), he should have acted to avoid poisoning the debate. There were plenty of "normal" way to do it, and in fact, other members of the Royal Society have done so and have expressed concerns when similar things have happened.
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.
I can't keep track of all conspiracy theories Musk has amplified or told himself, but there is another example with Fauci directly linked to vaccines in the blog post.
Tweets without context are not "obviously" aimed at specific things. Prosecute/Fauci was both ambiguous and in bad taste.
Given that I'm listening to Kennedy's The Real Anthony Fauci while typing this I have a hard time taking this seriously. Both the 'offend the alphabet community' (whatever that might be given that there is no love lost between the L and Q, G and Q, B and Q, L and T and G and T factions in this 'community') as well as the defence of Fauci, a person who declared himself representing The Science™ while recklessly trampling its principles.
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.
If the conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. is who you get your information from, I can't help you.
I get my data and information from many places, both officially sanctioned as well as those which are in opposition to those sources. I also use a good dose of scepticism when dealing with all sources, both the former as well as the latter.
Where do you get your information?
There are many doctors who express problems with the C19 vaccines. In some countries (most notably Japan) there are public hearings and parliament questions. In the west it seems this is not allowed.
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.
> and most likely did know that pregnant women in the trail had a lot of "spontaneous abortions"
Pregnant women are at higher risk of getting COVID which is liked to preterm birth
And if you were a scientist who was going to lead a study that could conclude otherwise, Francis & Fauci took extra care to make sure you were less likely to receive NIH funding.
just look at the table of the studies that were included and the countries where the studies were performed
That's from 2023.
The vaccines worked and saved a lot of lives. There were very rare side effects, and once those were recognized they were addressed in various ways, e.g. by changing the groups that should receive the vaccines.
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.
> very rare side effects
Still in these very days we meet random people who in normal random conversation tell us (as part of other matters) of coincidental devastating effects.
How did you make that jump from "paper" to "reality", and hold it with the certainty of "a hedgehog here is vomiting on my shoes"? Do not bring us back to that long epiphany that the "dark ages" are still here, never gone.
> Still in these very days we meet random people who in normal random conversation tell us (as part of other matters) of coincidental devastating effects.
You may have. I haven't met anyone who has had any effects other than feeling mildly sick for a day or two afterwards. That's the thing about anecdotal evidence.
> were very rare side effects, and once those were recognized they were addressed in various ways
Such as initially calling it all misinformation, and asking social media to censor it
> The part about abortions sounds like a blatant conspiracy theory.
Many countries are stopping the vaccine/booster rollout to the pregnant. They make up funny reasons, but it's safe to consider they know more than we do and simply dont want the data out there.
Govts and big pharma really do not want the data to be analyzed. And they should actually most supportive of showing all available data (anonymized obviously).
It's not a consp theory: the FDA, CDC and big pharma have clearly conspired against us, trying to make the C19 vaccine look better, vilifying everyone who did not want it.
> Many countries are stopping the vaccine/booster rollout to the pregnant.
Since you mentioned Japan, I wondered if you meant that country
> 【Q3】 Can I still get the vaccine if I am pregnant, breastfeeding, or planning to become pregnant?
> Yes, you can get the vaccine. There have been no reports that the COVID-19 vaccines approved in Japan has any adverse effects on pregnancy, fetus, breast milk, or reproductive organs. Vaccination is recommended regardless of the time of pregnancy.
> Several studies have shown that messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines do not cause complications in pregnancy, either for expectant mothers or their babies.
> On the contrary, COVID-19 vaccines protect expectant mothers and their babies.
How is criticizing a particular politician [1] "antivaxx"? This intentional conflation of scientific "truth" [2] with the particular policies that a democratic government decides to implement was one of the most blatantly bad faith phenomena of the pandemic. Even if we had an oracle that could have given us perfect future predictions, it would still not be able to answer the ethical questions of which path to choose. That's for the people to decide
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
My esteem of the Royal Society is lessened by the realisation that it admits not just scientists, but also mere CEOs who aren’t scientists themselves. Would Henry Ford be admitted? In my opinion that inflates the prestige of membership.
I know who Elon Musk is and his contributions. My apologies, but I have never heard of the author and their contribution, and why should I fucking care what they (and 80 of their politically like-minded friends) think out of a thousand other members? Obviously the Royal Society's own relevance is hinged on picking who they should keep between two opposing members.
Fame isn't relevant.
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.
> Fame isn't relevant.
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?
Obviously I meant general fame, given I was replying to you saying you'd never heard of them.
As for theirs relative to their peers: why would you expect to be able to recognise the relative value of their contributions? Unless you're also in a position to reject membership of the Royal
Society, you're not elite enough to be able to tell if either of them is scientific elite.
> 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?
Paid a team to. That's more than nothing (none of the other US rocket contractors were seriously interested in trying, his vision did make it happen) but it's not like he did it all himself either.
> ...you're not elite enough to be able to tell if either of them is scientific elite.
No, that is not a logical axiom. It can be possible you'd be able to evaluate things to be false, even though you don't know what the actual truth precisely is. To demonstrate this obvious point, I can fairly easily make an educated guess on the author's relative contribution to Isaac Newton and I don't need to be an FRS to do so or have veto power in RS membership. It might be politically incorrect to state the obvious, but we all know it is true: both Musk and Newton are more important than the author.
Also, the whole point of publishing such an open letter is for the public to adjudicate the claim on their perception and thus pressure the RS to act based on public outrage, so to pretend the public opinion, i.e. what we think, is irrelevant here is preposterous.
> Paid a team to.
Sure, the only one who's paid someone to. If anything that makes it more impressive, not less.
> You could google her?
The fact that I would have to do that is precisely my point.
> It can be possible you'd be able to evaluate things to be false, even though you don't know what the actual truth precisely is
Only as a general statement, not when predicated on "this person is already in the Royal Society".
New members are evaluated by the existing group; unless you're good enough to be in it, you literally can't tell who is good enough to be in it.
Those on the outside are no better than Dilbert's boss saying "Mauve has the most RAM".
You're making the same mistake, in the opposite direction, as all those who say that Musk is just an idiot and a grifter with a lot of money. I have to point out to such people that he is well regarded as an actual rocket scientist — the point is, you can't put "well regarded" onto a concrete comparative scale without also being in the same league yourself, just as those who aren't in software development will put Linus Torvalds and Sir Tim Berners-Lee in the "who?" pile while praising Sid Meier and John Carmack because they wrote games they've heard of.
> It might be politically incorrect to state the obvious, but we all know it is true: both Musk and Newton are more important than the author.
Do you understand calculus — itself, rather than the historical context and power struggles — well enough to explain why Newton is more famous today than his peer Leibniz who contemporaneously and independently invented the same foundational concepts?
The point is not to claim that he knows nothing, but that this is a topic where you cannot even judge unless you're an expert yourself — otherwise you're pointing at PayPal having been a success and Musk having written code there and then making the mistake of assuming because it succeeded with him around then he personally must be a fantastic software developer when people seeing that have been quite adamant that he is not and when those of us who know the topic WTF at him wanting 50 pages of source code printed out.
Important in x ≠ the first to x ≠ competent at x ≠ famous due to x ≠ leads a team who did x ≠ rich enough to personally fund x ≠ sane, each is a different axis.
Even in retrospect, there's the question of if Newton was really all that much better than Leibniz or if it was mere politics that made him seem so — Newton was also Master of the Mint, so that aspect of "important" is unrelated to the other's aspect of "competence".
> Also, the whole point of publishing such an open letter is for the public to adjudicate the claim on their perception and thus pressure the RS to act based on public outrage, so to pretend the public opinion, i.e. what we think, is irrelevant here is preposterous.
Or to tell your friends. Or just to keep a public record for your own sanity to avoid gas-lighting, or to be able to say later "I told you so".
I blog, I have no pretensions of fame for what I write — even when I shared the (old, wordpress) links here it's seldom over 100 views, and that's fine.
> Sure, the only one who's paid someone to. If anything that makes it more impressive, not less.
If you wish to praise him for every success of his team, then you must equally blame him for every failure of his team. Other side of the same coin. To say that he, personally, should be rewarded for what his team did with his money is to say that he, personally, should be punished personally for every otherwise healthy monkey euthanised by errors that Neuralink, personally for riots organised on Twitter as a result of his changes to policy, personally for racism in his Tesla factories — and I say this equally but in reverse order to those who demonised him for all those things.
I would not blame him for all that, not personally. But I would not put him on a higher pedestal than Y Combinator either. And in science, I cannot judge him for my skills within the domain are not sufficient — I have but one paper with my name on it.
> The fact that I would have to do that is precisely my point.
Without googling, name the engineers who actually designed Mechazilla.
Without googling, say who told Musk, before IFT-1, that it was a bad idea to launch without a suppression system.
Without googling, do you know who or what convinced Musk to move away from evaporative cooling of Starship and back to more traditional heat shields?
Heck, without searching, if you can name even one SpaceX engineer, including those in launch live-streams and anyone you know personally then you're in an extremely unusually knowledgable position.
Leadership is a skill in its own right, that's why monarchs and presidents get to be on the coins, but it doesn't mean the person at the top is themselves good at the tasks performed by those they lead.
A summary on scientists from the World Science Forum 2024:
"The emphasis has been placed on innovation, the rankings have reduced scientists to publication machines, and this brings with it increasing distrust towards researchers."
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)
Wow! Hurt 'scientists' are among us apparently, it only took some seconds to downvote (mostly the words of other scientists, the rest is caustic irony). Small people, no place for widespread critical view, facing problems, self criticism.
This is another example of how badly mislead people can become despite being smart. This is a man who is virtuous, true - just! Or has been for many years, in his mind on the 'good' side. And he's certainly done a lot of good. But...
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.
I respect the author's principle-based approach but many of her arguments seem a little off. If the RS doesn't expel people for their politics, then it doesn't make sense to expel Musk for, essentially, concerns about his politics. And if you expel crotchety scientists for disagreeing with the scientific consensus there won't be any left. The RS motto is literally "Take nobody's word for it"; I don't see how Musk disagreeing with other's opinions could possibly be grounds for removing him.
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.
> If the RS doesn't expel people for their politics, then it doesn't make sense to expel Musk for, essentially, concerns about his politics.
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".
I understand where you're coming from but because of Covid and those years, using the shield of 'science' to disallow criticism is a little underhanded. Covid/Vaccines/Lockdowns are on the table of politics for the foreseeable future.
Not in the context of the royal society they aren't. Or they shouldn't be. That's kinda the point of its existence.
Did you even read it?
Whatever your ideology, you can't say in good faith they want him gone solely due to neutral principles of scientific integrity. Personally, I don't care much since I don't even understand why he got included in the first place.Promoting peaceful debate is arguably a core aspect of scientific integrity. My impression is that the author would be just as miffed by someone spreading misinformation about GMOs that leads to left-wing thuggery against crop research institutes.
I feel similarly. I agree Musk doesn't belong in the RS, but I'd have said the same in 2018 (I missed the news). It's concerning that the author has only come to this realization now that Musk vocally disagrees with her political views. I don't consider that principled at all
It's not about that Musk disagrees with her political views, it's that he is being anti-scientific, pushing wrong scientific facts and so on to further his personal agenda, which happens to involve a lot of politics.
I took the time to read those Guardian links (sigh) and that's just misrepresentation.
Vaccines: almost nobody refutes the scientific basis behind vaccines (not even talking about mRNA vs traditional), but trusting vaccine admission means trusting powers that have historically been quite evil (cf Tuskegee syphilis study, MKUltra, contaminated blood scandals in Europe and Japan, etc...). Elon's "meme" isn't about said science and this article/post conflates the two.
Climate: I read the 2024 article and extracts from a mostly informal interview like
, while not without faults, don't seem anti-scientific in any way to me. Trump's side seemed way more unhinged, from the few cherry-picked quotes in the article.Misinformation on X: the usual "calling the other side fake news/disinformation/conspiracy theories and touting threat to democracy", not interesting in the least. Also, why is someone writing about that in the British Medical Journal??
tl;dr this is an ideological blog post amongst thousand of others.
The video that Musk posted with the vaccine efficacy numbers dropping from 100 to 50 is clickbait nonsense. As is the "shouldn't all the unvaccinated be dead" meme. On the myocarditis topic he consistently focused on the relatively tiny risks and brought up vaccines in the context of Bronny James for no reason other than to bait outrage. None of this befits a serious scientist such as the FRS aims to include in its ranks.
No, I agree with most of it, but that's what should have been written in the blog post and not by someone else on HN after the fact.
The meme, though, I wonder... I live in a country that wasn't as hardcore as some of the Commonwealth on the "forced vaccination" front so I don't identify with it, but there was certainly a lot of propaganda surrounding it in the wide world; on how people who refused were almost traitors shirking their civic duties.
> how people who refused were almost traitors shirking their civic duties
I wasn't quite that hardcore, but I did (and still do) find it difficult to accept refusals to vaccinate for seemingly little reason. It felt like some people were being stubbornly complicit in drawing out the pandemic and putting their contacts at higher risk. I guess it's a question of degree - how many lives does a collective behaviour need to save, before it becomes justified to mandate it?
Everything is ideological. But reading the excerpts from the RS Code of Conduct she posted, Musk's behavior does seem to go against it.
Also, you cannot deny that Musk has been amplifying conspiracy theories. Does not matter if he believes in them or just does it for the "lolz".
A conspiracy theory for one side is undeniable truth for the other. Not falling into relativist garbage, there's a difference between "conspiracy theories about everything from vaccines to race replacement theory to misogyny" and flat earth.
If it was just scientific consensus and politics, that would be one thing — while I share the author's opinion in these aspects, I recognise these aspects are not sufficient for such a response.
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.
The core of the OP’s argument as I see it is that the RS requires its fellows to treat other scientists with curtesy. Elon clearly doesn’t feel bound by that, but the OP does.
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.
Yeah, I'd class that as high- and low- status behaviour. One of the things that high-status people have to deal with is that they basically create the rules by their behaviour and actions. That leads to a certain disregard for what is written on-paper because they can write different things on it if they want to.
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).
> Yeah, I'd class that as high- and low- status behaviour.
Interesting. You mean it’s high-status to disregard rules that don’t have formal consequences?
I guess I’m a bit confused, in that we clearly used to have a society that operated much more on rules without formal consequences. E.g. here in Sweden our law books are absolutely filled with them. Obviously there must have been high-status people that took them seriously in the past, otherwise we wouldn’t have been a well functioning society.
Yes, the mistake was inviting him to be a fellow in the first place. Now he's in, the Society must follow its rules and precedents. At the very least, it shouldn't be seen to expel someone for political opinions or heterodox views on science. Some the of Royal Society's most notable members have had lunatic fringe ideas and they weren't thrown out.
The thing is neither climate change nor vaccines are political opinions or views. They are hard scientific facts and you are absolute moron if you try to twist them into political views.
Unfortunately, the expression 'hard scientific facts' does not represent general reality. Academically. (I.e.: "things are not that simple".)
Science informs policy, but it doesn't create or judge it. Science can help you predict the effects of vaccinating every adult in a population, but it can't say whether you should mandate that
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
> And is it still controversial to say that the efficacy of covid vaccine was a lot more disappointing than we were basically all expecting?
As "controversial" means "prolonged public dispute or debate", necessarily so.
But I think also incorrect compared to the scientific discussion at the time. Not necessarily false compared to the political discussion or the newspapers etc., but the actual researchers themselves, who understood the reports and didn't get all their information from misleading summarised headlines like the rest of us:
"""What that means is if you had a hundred people who got coronavirus, this vaccine would have prevented 95% of them. So if that same 100 people had been vaccinated, only five of them would have got coronavirus. And that's the number that I really look for to start off with.
Now, when all of these studies were being designed, they said that they wanted to be able to get a vaccine that had a vaccine effectiveness of greater than 30%. That was the number that they were targeting. If they had a vaccine effectiveness of greater than 30%, then this would be a good result.
And to have a vaccine effectiveness of 95%, that's huge. That's so much more than we ever could have hoped for. And it's such a big result. And the other studies have also had really good vaccine effectiveness estimates.""" - https://www.numberphile.com/podcast/jennifer-rogers
> Or that the apocalyptic predictions of lockdown-lifting were just a tiny bit overstated
You reckon?
Emergency breaking is unpleasant, but it means you don't hit something that will decelerate you even harder.
This is the UK inquiry after the events, obviously the US is going to have had a different situation: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9py388z17o
If you don't take vaccines you are a fucktard
It's a valid viewpoint, however membership to the royal society is judged via candidates having made 'a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science'. I would argue Elon is fully within scope, outside of the fact that I think Elon is not the slightest fit to the general ethos of that specific organization.
How is he within scope? At best he might have contributed to advancing engineering science, but is that really the case? Has he not rather merely financed engineering science and perhaps not even engineering science but just engineering practice?
From the blogpost: "wider contributions to science, engineering or medicine through leadership, organisation, scholarship or communication" He's clearly relevant based on contribution to engineering (maybe science too) through organization (maybe leadership, communication too).
This is the salient point. Musk is not a "science" person. He is no Einstein or Newton. He has many good qualities, amongst them a broad appreciation of engineering, commerce and motivating people. He is ambitious. But Musk neither holds a PhD (I imagine he'd lack the patience and focus) nor has any notable specialism. Like Gates and Zuckerberg who both dropped out of their computer science degrees to make money, Musk is another of this new breed of "technologist" who we lionise as though they were "great scientists".
The Royal Society is a club for great scientists and it has erred by expanding its definition of "contribution to science" to include businessmen and financiers who contribute through money and influence.
> This is the salient point
No it's not lol. you just decided to ignore the criteria for membership and invent your own, like a phD being requisite (it is not.)
Also, to call Musk a "businessman" is reductive as hell. I know a lot of people have pressure to hate him because of political reasons, but be real for once.
The full quote:
> 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.
To quote him "Whereas previously he seemed to agree with mainstream scientific opinion" Can someone please explain to me how we managed to get a whole generation of the western scientific thinkers who think the scientific method is consensus of scientific opinion? The author lists Isaac Newton, Hooke, Boyle . All of these prominent minds made scientific breakthroughs that didn't stick to the consensus views of the time.
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.
> People interested should look at
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.
The difference is that Elon Musk has not challenged scientific consensus by publishing revolutionary studies or conducting risky experiments, but rather by republishing inflammatory statements online. His actual achievements (including super-heavy rockets and electric cars) are largely independent from his unconventional views on vaccines, for instance.
You can't compare him to figures like Newton and Hooke, who made both their names and their living from science.
Elons success is in very large part due to challenging the status quo
Whats his unconvential views on vaccines? I am not convinced he has any. Could not find anything obvious at leadt
All politics aside, is it normal for business people to be elected to the royal society?
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).
Membership to the royal society is judged via candidates having made 'a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science'.
By thinking, or by spending money?
Seems you kind of need people who are capable and willing to do both. Not too many Bruce Wayne’s and Tony Starks outside the comic books and movies who are able to both think and spend.
Musk’s value to science and technological progress is not his scientific intellect. Musk’s value is his ability to invest gobs of money in smart people and be patient for years for the returns on his investment to occur…and to be willing to fail.
I’m sure he is an asshole and I don’t care what political tribe he follows. I watch rockets fly into space pretty much weekly from my backyard. Feels like every third car is a Tesla on the road. His investment patience has had value to society.
Bezos has tossed a lot of money towards space and did not get as far. Elon has absolutely earned his reputation.
In fairness, Blue Origin has had only a tenth to a half of the funding that SpaceX has had (depending on which sources you trust; figures vary widely). Yet they are hardly doing badly by any measure: they have an almost fully reusable sub-orbital spacecraft which has consistently and safely carried passengers, and they have a orbital rocket ready for testing next month. SpaceX are clearly the market leader, but this is partially because they are into the category of companies who can now convey profitable payloads for NASA/DoD, with the public funding which goes along with that.
Technologically, SpaceX are miles (per second!) ahead of Blue Origin, but in business terms there is perhaps not a great difference between them. First-mover's advantage doesn't often translate into return-on-investment!
> Elon has absolutely earned his reputation.
I think you will find that is exactly what the Royal Society have concluded!
Spending money on scientific endeavors that turn out to be successful typically requires thinking.
Does it? My conservative hypothesis is: it requires a good nose for good thinkers.
Having a good nose for good thinkers typically requires thinking.
I'm not so sure. I think there are people who can recognise talent by gut feel, without having much themselves.
a bunch of frontend developers are about to tell you you're wrong and Musk is actually an idiot
I 100% support that letter. Musk is a stain on the Royal Society.
I think the world at large today could use a few more people appealing to our better natures. For that, this is a wonderful statement.
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.
So some brown-nosers thought to pull Musk in because they thought it would get them some news and mentions and so on, possibly be financially advantageous in some way despite him not really being a scientist.
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.
The whole episode is a nice and timely reminder of the difficulty of the society as a whole in dealing with scientists and understanding which ones are good, which ones can be trusted, etc. Academic societies such as the RS help, but as this shows they are by no means perfect, and can be gamed and manipulated when the stakes are high enough. It is a real challenge though -- how do you trust a scientist without having to learn all the science they are telling you about?
Elon Musk is not a scientist. He employs scientists.
But do general people know who is a scientist and who isn't? How do they find out?
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.
I mean, the Royal Society has always been crazy, and full of provocative and crazy people. I'm not sure how you can have a group of geniuses without that.
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.
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. I think you have a good point.
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.
I really don't like this growing implication of scientists with political struggles orthogonal to their expertise.
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
[dead]
[flagged]
[flagged]
If you have read the article, it's not at all about that. But great job hiding behind your throw away account.
[flagged]
The Royal Society is important because it is where the UK government go when they need good advice on scientific issues. Many people in the US might think that their government doesn't need good advice on scientific issues but, as they will find out, they are wrong.
If so, why would one automatically assume Musk has the bad advice and the rest of them have good advice? It's awfully ironic as science is literally the process of demonstrating the widely-accepted wisdom (preeminent theory) wrong.
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.
> why would one automatically assume Musk has the bad advice
I don't think any of this is automatic. It's a considered response to the bias that Musk has recently demonstrated when discussing scientific topics.
>>non-mainstream opinions
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?
Why are they defending Fauci then?
Are they? They are objecting Musk posting provably wrong statements on social media, arguing that as a fellow of the RS he shouldn't do that - the statements are on a variety of topics, not just Fauci.
Let's take your word for it. Fauci is a fellow too. If they are so concerned about spreading truth, why don't they object to his provably false statements and unethical exclusion of NIH funding of scientists (proof in email records) he does not like and ask for his exclusion?
You very well know the answer to that.
>>You very well know the answer to that.
I genuienly honestly don't know.
It's generally the latter.
"How do you know" teaches us something; "how do you perceive it" does not.
[flagged]
Noble enough.
> Most of those I've spoken to agree that a serious breach of these principles was in 2022, when Musk tweeted: "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci", thereby managing to simultaneously offend the LGBTQ community, express an antivaxx sentiment, and put Fauci, already under attack from antivaxxers, at further risk.
This statement is clearly relevant to a scientific society. It is not just about unrelated bigotry by a fellow of that society.
Elons statements were obviously not aimed at Faucis role in vaccine discussions, but in his much more dubious role in gain-of-function research and especially covering up the origins of Covid.
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.
If it was Musk's intent (but I doubt it was the case, because it does not fit with a lot of other things that Musk did or said that show he is aiming at Faucci role in vaccine discussions), he should have acted to avoid poisoning the debate. There were plenty of "normal" way to do it, and in fact, other members of the Royal Society have done so and have expressed concerns when similar things have happened.
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.
I can't keep track of all conspiracy theories Musk has amplified or told himself, but there is another example with Fauci directly linked to vaccines in the blog post.
Tweets without context are not "obviously" aimed at specific things. Prosecute/Fauci was both ambiguous and in bad taste.
Given that I'm listening to Kennedy's The Real Anthony Fauci while typing this I have a hard time taking this seriously. Both the 'offend the alphabet community' (whatever that might be given that there is no love lost between the L and Q, G and Q, B and Q, L and T and G and T factions in this 'community') as well as the defence of Fauci, a person who declared himself representing The Science™ while recklessly trampling its principles.
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.
If the conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. is who you get your information from, I can't help you.
I get my data and information from many places, both officially sanctioned as well as those which are in opposition to those sources. I also use a good dose of scepticism when dealing with all sources, both the former as well as the latter.
Where do you get your information?
There are many doctors who express problems with the C19 vaccines. In some countries (most notably Japan) there are public hearings and parliament questions. In the west it seems this is not allowed.
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.
> and most likely did know that pregnant women in the trail had a lot of "spontaneous abortions"
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
And if you were a scientist who was going to lead a study that could conclude otherwise, Francis & Fauci took extra care to make sure you were less likely to receive NIH funding.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/05/how-collins-and-fauci...
just look at the table of the studies that were included and the countries where the studies were performed
That's from 2023.
The vaccines worked and saved a lot of lives. There were very rare side effects, and once those were recognized they were addressed in various ways, e.g. by changing the groups that should receive the vaccines.
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.
> very rare side effects
Still in these very days we meet random people who in normal random conversation tell us (as part of other matters) of coincidental devastating effects.
How did you make that jump from "paper" to "reality", and hold it with the certainty of "a hedgehog here is vomiting on my shoes"? Do not bring us back to that long epiphany that the "dark ages" are still here, never gone.
> Still in these very days we meet random people who in normal random conversation tell us (as part of other matters) of coincidental devastating effects.
You may have. I haven't met anyone who has had any effects other than feeling mildly sick for a day or two afterwards. That's the thing about anecdotal evidence.
> were very rare side effects, and once those were recognized they were addressed in various ways
Such as initially calling it all misinformation, and asking social media to censor it
> The part about abortions sounds like a blatant conspiracy theory.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/was-covid-v...
Many countries are stopping the vaccine/booster rollout to the pregnant. They make up funny reasons, but it's safe to consider they know more than we do and simply dont want the data out there.
Govts and big pharma really do not want the data to be analyzed. And they should actually most supportive of showing all available data (anonymized obviously).
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350147366/ex-public-servan...
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/why-a-...
It's not a consp theory: the FDA, CDC and big pharma have clearly conspired against us, trying to make the C19 vaccine look better, vilifying everyone who did not want it.
> Many countries are stopping the vaccine/booster rollout to the pregnant.
Since you mentioned Japan, I wondered if you meant that country
> 【Q3】 Can I still get the vaccine if I am pregnant, breastfeeding, or planning to become pregnant?
> Yes, you can get the vaccine. There have been no reports that the COVID-19 vaccines approved in Japan has any adverse effects on pregnancy, fetus, breast milk, or reproductive organs. Vaccination is recommended regardless of the time of pregnancy.
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/covid-19/qa_vaccine.html#:~:text=....
Maybe you meant Europe?
> Several studies have shown that messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines do not cause complications in pregnancy, either for expectant mothers or their babies.
> On the contrary, COVID-19 vaccines protect expectant mothers and their babies.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory-overview/publi...
Maybe it's not funny reasons but funny countries?
How is criticizing a particular politician [1] "antivaxx"? This intentional conflation of scientific "truth" [2] with the particular policies that a democratic government decides to implement was one of the most blatantly bad faith phenomena of the pandemic. Even if we had an oracle that could have given us perfect future predictions, it would still not be able to answer the ethical questions of which path to choose. That's for the people to decide
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
My esteem of the Royal Society is lessened by the realisation that it admits not just scientists, but also mere CEOs who aren’t scientists themselves. Would Henry Ford be admitted? In my opinion that inflates the prestige of membership.
I know who Elon Musk is and his contributions. My apologies, but I have never heard of the author and their contribution, and why should I fucking care what they (and 80 of their politically like-minded friends) think out of a thousand other members? Obviously the Royal Society's own relevance is hinged on picking who they should keep between two opposing members.
Fame isn't relevant.
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.
> Fame isn't relevant.
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?
Obviously I meant general fame, given I was replying to you saying you'd never heard of them.
As for theirs relative to their peers: why would you expect to be able to recognise the relative value of their contributions? Unless you're also in a position to reject membership of the Royal Society, you're not elite enough to be able to tell if either of them is scientific elite.
> 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?
Paid a team to. That's more than nothing (none of the other US rocket contractors were seriously interested in trying, his vision did make it happen) but it's not like he did it all himself either.
> What is the author's accomplishments?
You could google her? She's got her own Wikipedia entry and the Royal Society has a bio: https://royalsociety.org/people/dorothy-bishop-11092/
> ...you're not elite enough to be able to tell if either of them is scientific elite.
No, that is not a logical axiom. It can be possible you'd be able to evaluate things to be false, even though you don't know what the actual truth precisely is. To demonstrate this obvious point, I can fairly easily make an educated guess on the author's relative contribution to Isaac Newton and I don't need to be an FRS to do so or have veto power in RS membership. It might be politically incorrect to state the obvious, but we all know it is true: both Musk and Newton are more important than the author.
Also, the whole point of publishing such an open letter is for the public to adjudicate the claim on their perception and thus pressure the RS to act based on public outrage, so to pretend the public opinion, i.e. what we think, is irrelevant here is preposterous.
> Paid a team to.
Sure, the only one who's paid someone to. If anything that makes it more impressive, not less.
> You could google her?
The fact that I would have to do that is precisely my point.
> It can be possible you'd be able to evaluate things to be false, even though you don't know what the actual truth precisely is
Only as a general statement, not when predicated on "this person is already in the Royal Society".
New members are evaluated by the existing group; unless you're good enough to be in it, you literally can't tell who is good enough to be in it.
Those on the outside are no better than Dilbert's boss saying "Mauve has the most RAM".
You're making the same mistake, in the opposite direction, as all those who say that Musk is just an idiot and a grifter with a lot of money. I have to point out to such people that he is well regarded as an actual rocket scientist — the point is, you can't put "well regarded" onto a concrete comparative scale without also being in the same league yourself, just as those who aren't in software development will put Linus Torvalds and Sir Tim Berners-Lee in the "who?" pile while praising Sid Meier and John Carmack because they wrote games they've heard of.
> It might be politically incorrect to state the obvious, but we all know it is true: both Musk and Newton are more important than the author.
Do you understand calculus — itself, rather than the historical context and power struggles — well enough to explain why Newton is more famous today than his peer Leibniz who contemporaneously and independently invented the same foundational concepts?
The point is not to claim that he knows nothing, but that this is a topic where you cannot even judge unless you're an expert yourself — otherwise you're pointing at PayPal having been a success and Musk having written code there and then making the mistake of assuming because it succeeded with him around then he personally must be a fantastic software developer when people seeing that have been quite adamant that he is not and when those of us who know the topic WTF at him wanting 50 pages of source code printed out.
Important in x ≠ the first to x ≠ competent at x ≠ famous due to x ≠ leads a team who did x ≠ rich enough to personally fund x ≠ sane, each is a different axis.
Even in retrospect, there's the question of if Newton was really all that much better than Leibniz or if it was mere politics that made him seem so — Newton was also Master of the Mint, so that aspect of "important" is unrelated to the other's aspect of "competence".
> Also, the whole point of publishing such an open letter is for the public to adjudicate the claim on their perception and thus pressure the RS to act based on public outrage, so to pretend the public opinion, i.e. what we think, is irrelevant here is preposterous.
Or to tell your friends. Or just to keep a public record for your own sanity to avoid gas-lighting, or to be able to say later "I told you so".
I blog, I have no pretensions of fame for what I write — even when I shared the (old, wordpress) links here it's seldom over 100 views, and that's fine.
> Sure, the only one who's paid someone to. If anything that makes it more impressive, not less.
If you wish to praise him for every success of his team, then you must equally blame him for every failure of his team. Other side of the same coin. To say that he, personally, should be rewarded for what his team did with his money is to say that he, personally, should be punished personally for every otherwise healthy monkey euthanised by errors that Neuralink, personally for riots organised on Twitter as a result of his changes to policy, personally for racism in his Tesla factories — and I say this equally but in reverse order to those who demonised him for all those things.
I would not blame him for all that, not personally. But I would not put him on a higher pedestal than Y Combinator either. And in science, I cannot judge him for my skills within the domain are not sufficient — I have but one paper with my name on it.
> The fact that I would have to do that is precisely my point.
Without googling, name the engineers who actually designed Mechazilla.
Without googling, say who told Musk, before IFT-1, that it was a bad idea to launch without a suppression system.
Without googling, do you know who or what convinced Musk to move away from evaporative cooling of Starship and back to more traditional heat shields?
Heck, without searching, if you can name even one SpaceX engineer, including those in launch live-streams and anyone you know personally then you're in an extremely unusually knowledgable position.
Leadership is a skill in its own right, that's why monarchs and presidents get to be on the coins, but it doesn't mean the person at the top is themselves good at the tasks performed by those they lead.
A summary on scientists from the World Science Forum 2024: "The emphasis has been placed on innovation, the rankings have reduced scientists to publication machines, and this brings with it increasing distrust towards researchers."
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)
Wow! Hurt 'scientists' are among us apparently, it only took some seconds to downvote (mostly the words of other scientists, the rest is caustic irony). Small people, no place for widespread critical view, facing problems, self criticism.
This is another example of how badly mislead people can become despite being smart. This is a man who is virtuous, true - just! Or has been for many years, in his mind on the 'good' side. And he's certainly done a lot of good. But...
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.