2,800 — And Growing — Scientists Butthurt Over Elon Musk Squeal To The Royal Society

Of all the glorious winning we have had this last month, this is my favorite by far. Some 3,000 squealing scientists signed a petition addressed to the Royal Society to express their displeasure Elon Musk has a fellowship from that organization.

The petition’s real reason, as we’ll see below, is pure vice-signaling: nervous hersterical academics shouting “Look at me! I’m not like Trump supporters!” This has nothing to do with Elon Musk being given some useless honorary title (likely awarded because he is rich). This is arrogant scientists demanding to be given your money because they cannot imagine a world in which they have no paycheck.

The petition asks the Royal Society to rebuke one of the world’s more powerful men. It will thus be of interest to see what the Royal Society does. If, as I suspect, nothing, then from the RS’s point of view, it is all about money. If they revoke Musk’s fellowship, then European science will have become a nonentity.

The Royal Society, like all major science-in-name organizations, is indeed overtly political. Every such group, that I know of anyway, in the West has bowed their knee to pathetic secular gods and stupid science. Hello, “gender theory”, “climate change”, DIEing and all the rest. In this, they followed the money, grew rich, but lost their scientific credibility.

Stephen Curry, a retired Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College London, and sometime Guardian contributor, is organizing the petition. As of this writing, there are 2,854 signatures from universities all over the world, though most come from the UK.

The petition opens:

I write to express my dismay at the continued silence and apparent inaction from the Royal Society over the Fellowship awarded in 2018 to Elon Musk.

The Society was made aware of Fellows’ concerns over six months ago about how Musk’s behaviour was in contravention of your Code of Conduct...

To that we can now add his post on X (Twitter) about the Rt Hon Jess Philips MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, falsely accusing her of being a “rape genocide apologist” who should be jailed, an utterance that placed her in physical danger.

It goes on in that vein, pure effeminate bilge. The hubris-filled weak always view disagreement, which they cannot bear, as “physical danger”.

The best laugh lines come in this paragraph, dripping with wounded pride:

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.

Assault on scientific research! Darn right. There is too much of it, much of it bad, and too much done by the weak-minded, the proof of that contention being this very petition. DIE-minded brook-no-opposition professors appealing to “academic freedom” is particularly hilarious.

“That’s too strong, Briggs. Sure, you have some disagreements over methods and results in science, but there’s no need to get personal.”

That so? Then what do we make of this pee-in-the-pants passage that thousands of so-called eminent scientists are keen to sign their name to?

What message does it send about the Society’s commitment to upholding its code, its values and its declarations about the importance of diversity and inclusion? What message of support does it send to our friends and colleagues in the USA, especially women, people from ethnic minorities, and disabled and LGBT researchers who are most exposed to the Trump-led offensive that has recruited Elon Musk FRS as its most enthusiastic general?

The message is: Grow up, Official Victims are no longer accorded special status; start doing real work or get out.

The petition is pathetic. And so are its signers.

I wanted to thank Curry for bringing to my attention the state of European science, and so wrote this comment on his blog. Which, alas, never made it out of moderation. However, my thanks, as I said, are sincere, so I repeat it here:

This squealy hersterical (there is no misspelling) overreaction is hilarious, its existence a terrific argument for dramatic and very, very large cuts to public science funding.

As such, and sincerely, I can’t thank you enough for producing it.

Incidentally, above you used the term “EDI”. By that, did you mean DIE, i.e. Diversity Inclusion and Equity? Or is this something else?

I think “EDI” is DIE, but I welcome correction.

The good news is that the Royal Society ignored Curry’s first (and another) attempt. This gives some weight to the idea they’ll ignore this petition. Best bet is they pretend it doesn’t exist. Money is money, after all, and they always need more of it.

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