81–90 of 121 posts
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 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…
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…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Someo…
> 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 tak…
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/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 tak…
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 tak…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 hi…
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.