The Royal Society is thinking of chucking Elon Musk out of their exclusive club. The man who caught a falling rocket, who bought electric cars to the world, who is testing chips that may heal paralysis, and runs the first private company to put astronauts in space, is not good enough for the precious collective. One day, he may well get us to Mars. Which science club would look pretty silly then?
After all, it’s not like he faked data, wasted billions in grants, sold taxpayers a hundred dodgy weather-changing-schemes, or killed people with an experimental drug is it? (Though, if he had, they’d probably give him a medal.)
It’s all about The Money
The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and hasn’t chucked anyone out for 150 years, so you’d think his crime must be a serious failing in science. Supposedly, the mob say, he breached their code of conduct, was mean to other members and spread “conspiracy theories” and “misinformation”. But the real truth, as even Nature explains in their subheader, is that he committed the unforgivable sin of cutting off the grant money.
We know this because even though 74 members protested last August with a truckload of complaints, the mass pile-on only happened in the last few weeks when President Trump and the DOGE team were shutting down wasteful programs. Suddenly 3,000 members scientists of some sort are upset enough to sign an open letter. Auditing taxpayer funds is a bridge too far for the dependent minions of Big Government. Too much waste is never enough.
One member, Dorothy Bishop resigned last year, and said Musk was guilty of using social media for the crime of “political propaganda“. As if half the members of the Royal Society don’t lecture us on blogs, tweets and the nightly news with smug left climate politics every other day. What she really means is he does the wrong kind of political propaganda.
The Royal Society members can pretend that this is not about the money, but after Dorothy Bishop laid out her list of issues, they hired a lawyer to investigate, and they said that Elon had not broken the Code of Conduct. So what’s left is that this really is about “the money”.
The Open Letter to the Royal Society from Emeritus Professor Stephen Curry lists the money and somehow calls it a free speech issue:
The situation is rendered more serious because Mr Musk now occupies a position within a Trump administration in the USA that has over the past several weeks engaged in an assault on scientific research in the US that has fallen foul of federal courts. It has sought to impose huge cuts in funding and a regime of censorship (particularly with regard to EDI and climate issues) that is a direct threat to freedom of expression and academic freedom.
If the Royal Society gave a toss about free speech they would have objected to the vilification of scientists who disagree with government mandated “consensuses”. They would have protested the sacking of anyone with a diverse view. Instead they’re not only silent about cancel-culture in science, they endorse it. They rewarded and lauded the namecalling psychologist who calls skeptical scientists “climate deniers” — a political, demeaning label, designed to bully and silence them. Consider Stephen Lewandowsky (fellow of the Royal Society) who hid his data, included a person who was 32,000 years old in a survey, and miraculously claimed to show “skeptics” of government consensuses are nutters by asking other people (who are hostile to skeptics) to fill out a survey. It was that bad. (And yes, he has signed the letter objecting to Elon Musk). The Royal Society is fine with bullying, and bad science — as long as it doesn’t threaten the funding.
Elon Musk — “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci“
As for Curry’s other objections to Elon Musk, the Society was tarnished, he said, by its lack of commitment to “diversity and inclusion” because Elon joked about Anthony Fauci on X and the Society hadn’t reprimanded him. The real question here is why the Royal Society should care much about diversity and inclusion. Shouldn’t they care about merit and scientific standards instead?
Dorothy Bishop says Elon breached the Code of Conduct. The rules, she says, are that:
Fellows and Foreign Members shall treat all individuals in the scientific enterprise collegially and with courtesy, and …shall not engage in any form of discrimination, harassment, or bullying.
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. Fauci was not a Fellow at the time these comments were made, but that should not matter given the scope of the statement is “individuals in the scientific community“. This incident was covered by CBS News.
Since then Fauci has been pardoned by President Joe Biden for everything back to 2014, which Fauci accepted, showing that Elon was not just funny, but right: “Prosecute Fauci” indeed.
Thou shalt not question injections — is that science?
Dorothy Bishop was concerned about “Musk’s use of X to spread misinformation, promote vaccine hesitancy and attack public sciences “. No one at the Royal Society apparently, or at Nature (which repeated her accusation), had the wit to point out that it was a strange scientific paradigm to say that one type of medical therapy was beyond question. The motto of the Royal Society is Nullius in Verba, which means “take no one’s word for it”– except apparently when it’s a new barely-tested mRNA therapy, of course, and then we’re supposed to take everyone’s word for it, all the time, and inject our pregnant women and babies too. It’s like vaccines are a holy sacrament — or perhaps a huge source of revenue for Royal Society members?
Shh. We wouldn’t want to put open discussion about public health above profits, patents and grants, would we?
The Royal Society acts every day more and more like a trade union for approved priests of science.
They reveal their small mindedness in so many ways. They accuse Musk of “attacking public sciences” which begs the question of what a public science is? Is that different to real science? Or has the Royal Society totally forgotten that science is a process and not a government institution?
The original full name of the Society was The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge and no one on Earth is doing more to improve natural knowledge than Elon Musk is. And the reason he can do so much, so fast, is surely because he is funding it all himself, not waiting for government approval, appeasing bureaucrats, or cringing before “science” committees with magical fashionable keywords like diversity.
Musk should quit the Royal Society because it has forgotten what science is
The Royal Society don’t know it, but they desperately need Elon Musk. The Royal Society has become nothing more than a workers union for government funded technicians dressed in lab coats, and he’s the greatest private scientist in the world today. He is the antidote to government funded paralysis in science (and in so many ways). Consensus “scientists” are just a paid marketing wing of Big Government — captured by the monopolistic funding.
The Royal Society need Elon much more than Elon needs the Royal Society. He should quit now, before they hold their sanctimonious meeting.
*UPDATE: Quitting? Nah. It only makes the Thought Police happy. Unless he has the time to excoriate them properly on the way out, it’s so much better to let them dig their own hole in public, then come crawling back when he gets to Mars. Besides, Elon has 218 million followers on X – If he wanted to set up a Society of Scientists — ones who care about the scientific method, he could do it tomorrow.
REFERENCE
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00486-5
h/t Willie Soon