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Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

deevybee.blogspot.com

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Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#51

Post by tgma »

tristramb wrote: post #34
Oarch wrote: post #6

No loss. Whinging about politics and non-mainstream opinions. Is there genuine curiosity (even dare I say wrongthink) left in the RS or is it just another polite social club for people to gather and feel smug about the consensuses they've formed.

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#52

Post by didntcheck »

fabian2k wrote: post #2

> 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 fello…

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

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#53

Post by tgma »

gambiting wrote: post #49
dead_gunslinger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

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.

[flagged]

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#54

Post by didntcheck »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #42
roenxi wrote: post #8

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 dis…

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.

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

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#55

Post by bjornsing »

roenxi wrote: post #8

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 dis…

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#56

Post by black_puppydog »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #38
cauch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 scienti…

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#57

Post by seabass-labrax »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #44
card_zero wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By thinking, or by spending money?

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!

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#58

Post by gambiting »

tgma wrote: post #53
gambiting wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

>>You very well know the answer to that.

I genuienly honestly don't know.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#59

Post by didntcheck »

fabian2k wrote: post #40
cies wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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." (Wik…

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 inves…

> 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

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#60

Post by bjornsing »

card_zero wrote: post #27
waihtis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Spending money on scientific endeavors that turn out to be successful typically requires thinking.
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