With each passing day, it is more difficult to remember that Elon Musk has not always been a political brandon. The former musk pleaded for his commercial interests and claimed to be deeply concerned about climate change, but he remained largely outside of partisan policy. As a result, it was much more popular. He hosted Saturday Night Live And walked the red carpet of the Met Gala. He also received substantial honors, including the election of one of the oldest and large science institutions, the Royal Society. The scholarship put Musk with raised company: in 2018, he went to London to add his signature to the charter of the company, alongside those of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton.
Thousands of scientists now call the name of Musk to be collapsed from the fine vellum pages of this charter. The effort began last summer, when 74 scholarship holders (out of around 1,600) sent a letter To the leaders of the Royal Society, it would have been concern that the articles X of Musk were fomental violence in the United Kingdom and could therefore slow down the institution. In November, one of the signatories, the neuropsychologist Dorothy Bishop, resigned of the Royal Society protesting this against what she considered an inaction; His statement cited the derogatory publications of Musk on Anthony Fauci and the promotion of disinformation by the billionaire on vaccines. Then, last month, Stephen Curry, a biologist who is not himself a Royal Society scholarship holder – or a guard on the Golden State Warriors – wrote an open letter Musk expulsionFor many of these same reasons. It has since been signed by more than 3,400 scientists, including more than 60 real comrades.
The company has taken no disciplinary measure in response to these supplications. Musk himself did not comment on the campaign to avoid it until March 2, when Geoffrey Hinton, “The Godfather of IA” (and a member of the 1998 Royal Society class), lent his voice to the cause. In a answer To refer to X, Musk said that only “fools without security” care about rewards and subscriptions. Despite I’m not crazy Bravado, musk seemed stung. He did not answer questions sent by email, but on X, he accused Hinton of cruelty. The following evening, the Royal Society summoned a meeting to discuss the issue. It took place behind closed doors, and what happened is still not entirely clear. (In an email at The AtlanticThe company said that all questions relating to individual scholarship holders are dealt with with confidence.) According to a report, the company now plans to send a letter For musc, although what he intends to write was undecided last week. At least for the moment, the musk scholarship seems to be sure.
This Royal Society hike arrives at a delicate moment for scientific institutions, especially universities. Having perhaps too far from political disputes in recent years, the leaders of these institutions are now trying to stay outside of politics at the precise moment when politicians are trying to damage them. Musk has perhaps been spared, so far, by an understandable desire among the leaders of the Royal Society to remain neutral. Scientific organizations that have succumbed to political orthodoxies or that have imposed them, have often come to regret it. During the Cold War, some scientists from the United States were faced with professional sanctions or outright ostracization because they were suspected of being communists. In the Soviet Union, dissident biologists were sent to the Gulag. At the top of the cultural revolution of China, a physicist who worked on the “Western science” of general relativity could be Resistance and denounced during a public gathering.
These cases are extreme, but subtle training of politics and science can be toxic in their own way. They can undermine the atmosphere of a free survey that gives science its unique power, its ability to sift the good ideas of bad research of a broader and refined vision of the universe. Even the declaration of well -intentioned support of an institution to a social cause can have a scary effect on any member who does not agree. The success of a scientist is largely determined by the evaluation of their work and their character by their peers. Scientific institutions should therefore avoid actions that may be interpreted as political political tests. They do not do it largely: no university would refuse a registration request from the graduate student of Donald Trump, at least not in terms of official policy. Likewise, simple support for Trump should not and would not disqualify the Royal Society musk.
Of course, Musk’s support for Trump is not the problem here. In his letter of resignation, Bishop raised the question of his scientific heresies, in particular vaccines, to affirm that he violated the company’s code of conduct, which prohibits scholarship holders from undermining the mission of the company. In 2021, Musk posted and later deleted an animated cartoon which described Bill Gates as a villain of fear who tried to control people with hairstyle vaccines. In 2023, he insinuated that the cardiac arrest of the NBA Bronny James could have been a side effect of these vaccines. As scandalous as these messages are, Musk is allowed to be wrong about certain things. Scientists are unevenly brilliant, if they are brilliant at all, and some of the best were heretics or even fools on a scientific or another. Lynn Margulis has revolutionized evolutionary biology. She also promoted pseudoscientific theories of HIV transmission. Freeman Dyson has better known the physical laws of the universe than almost anyone from Einstein, but he went to his skeptical grave to climate change. Margulis and Dyson’s kick of polished scientific society for these consensus violations would have impoverished science.
The best case to start the Royal Society musk does not concern its beliefs at all. This proceeds from his actions, the way he degrades the world of science in the name of Trump. During the months that followed the elections in 2024, he turned into a Trump administration tool, a chain saw, in his own story. And with this chain saw, the president began to dismember the major American scientific institutions. The Royal Society is an ancestor of these institutions. During his peak of several centuries, he financed scientific research which would not have been continued. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health do it today, on a larger scale. The members of the Royal Society are right to feel a pinch of solidarity while they are looking at Musk and his department of government efficiency push the deep cuts of the staff at the NSF and the NIH, and hear reports that deeper cuts are to come. In their speed and extent, these reductions of strength have no precedent in the history of American science.
Musk has done all this in the name of efficiency, but scientific research is antithetic to an implacable economy. Basic research needs a little to allow false starts and tests and errors. Everyone’s musk should know it. When the Royal Society announced that Musk would have become a scholarship holder, he cited the advances of SpaceX in rocket, first and foremost, and rightly. Society has made reusable rockets a reality, and if its wider vessel model begins to function reliably, it will allow a multitude of new wonders in space. But SpaceX’s success required long experimental phases and many exploded rockets, which all cost money. A large part of this money came from NASA, a scientific institution whose checks are signed by the American taxpayer. Last week was reported This NASA will also face budget cuts. They would be concentrated in its scientific division.
Perhaps Musk only values scientific institutions as a means for its personal ends. Perhaps he considers them as disposable scales that he can reject after climbing new heights of wealth. Be that as it may, scientists find it difficult to retaliate. They don’t have much money. Their petitions and open letters can be worthy of Digne. But at the very least, they should remove the honors they have extended to Musk. They do not have to let it keep the printer and the gravity of the Royal Society, one of the most legendary institutions to have come from the Enlightenment. If you give a man a medal and come back with a torch to burn your home, find how to stop it quickly. But also: tear the medal from his chest.