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Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

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Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#61

Post by roenxi »

bjornsing wrote: post #55
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 re…

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).

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#62

Post by a-french-anon »

shafyy wrote: post #47
didntcheck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#63

Post by hagbard_c »

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…

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#64

Post by bjornsing »

LeroyRaz wrote: post #21

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 roya…

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#65

Post by seabass-labrax »

thewanderer1983 wrote: post #48

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 ti…

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#66

Post by nonrandomstring »

quonn wrote: post #24
waihtis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#67

Post by fabian2k »

hagbard_c wrote: post #63
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…

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 trampl…

If the conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. is who you get your information from, I can't help you.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#68

Post by ben_w »

tgma wrote: post #20

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.

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#69

Post by zzbn00 »

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?

Re: Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

#70

Post by mdp2021 »

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…

> 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.

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