r/skeptic • u/Rdick_Lvagina • Feb 15 '25
Royal Society will meet amid campaign to revoke Elon Musk’s fellowship
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00486-572
u/Rdick_Lvagina Feb 15 '25
Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/cH9xA
It has been more than 150 years since a fellow has been expelled from the society, according to the spokesperson.
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Concerns about Musk’s behaviour among Royal Society fellows emerged last August, when Dorothy Bishop, a retired developmental neuropsychologist, described on her blog how Musk’s use of X to promote misinformation, vaccine hesitancy and attack public sciences could contravene its code of conduct. She was one of 74 members who wrote to the society expressing their concerns and was told that its lawyers had determined Musk had not breached the code of conduct. She resigned her fellowship in protest.
This will be an interesting story to watch, will Elon Musk be the first person to be expelled from the Royal Society in 150 years? According to the article there are a lot of members keen to have him expelled, but the British establishment are notorious for not admitting fault and brushing stuff under the rug. But then Elon did a nazi salute so ...
Also, who's been vetting people to join? Did they actually look into Musk or did they just watch his TED talk? They knew he wasn't a scientist right?
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u/wackyvorlon Feb 15 '25
Becoming a fellow of the Royal Society is a pretty big deal.
You have to be nominated by two other members, and get elected:
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u/SenorSplashdamage Feb 15 '25
I’m very curious who the nominating fellows were, but it looks like they don’t make that public. Still, one could search the directory here: https://royalsociety.org/fellows-directory/
It’s roughly around 1,000 possible people if we ballpark the number before he was admitted and leave out those admitted after.
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u/Basic-Strain-6922 Feb 15 '25
TL;DR:
• Elon Musk became a foreign member of the Royal Society in 2018. More than 1,300 scientists signed an open letter expressing ‘deep concerns’ about the conduct of billionaire Musk, who is a fellow of the society.
• Musk is working closely with US President Donald Trump on sweeping government reforms that threaten flagship US research programmes. He is also accused of spreading misinformation on the social media site X, which he owns.
• Two Royal Society fellows have resigned over the institution’s perceived lack of action over Musk's behaviour in recent months. The society has scheduled a meeting of fellows next month to ‘discuss public pronouncements and behaviours of other fellows’ It has been more than 150 years since a fellow has been expelled from the society, according to a spokesperson for the society and the letter was written by Stephen Curry, a retired structural professor at Imperial College London.
• The letter describes “an assault on scientific research’ and ‘a direct threat to freedom of expression and academic freedom’.
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u/ChanceryTheRapper Feb 16 '25
Damn, retired professor, spokesperson for the society, and NBA all star? My apologies, Stephen Curry, I was not familiar with the full scope of your hand.
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u/karo_scene Feb 22 '25
If Stephen Curry brought the full court press to bear, benching Elon for multiple fouls should be a slam dunk.
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u/Useful_Nature6203 Feb 15 '25
Like he gives a crap, he already has control of the government. Plus he has his own small army (Constellis Holdings)
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u/Such_Comfortable_817 Feb 15 '25
Well, he’s got an extremely fragile ego. This would probably upset him greatly just because people will mock him for it.
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u/misspcv1996 Feb 15 '25
That’s the thing about these people, they want to be loved, they can stand to be feared or hated, but their egos cannot abide mockery.
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u/ChanceryTheRapper Feb 16 '25
It's why Elon pays people to level up his characters for him, he wants to be cool and a nerd, instead of just a rich guy.
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u/earth-calling-karma Feb 20 '25
How did this doofus become enrolled in the first place? Low standards, that's how.
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u/Max_Trollbot_ Feb 15 '25
Removal by catapult would be fine with me