{"id":3829,"date":"2026-01-14T18:04:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T17:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/?p=3829"},"modified":"2026-01-14T18:08:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T17:08:33","slug":"critique-president-royal-society-comments-musk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2026\/01\/14\/critique-president-royal-society-comments-musk\/","title":{"rendered":"Critique of comments by the President of the Royal Society on the Musk Affair"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Screenshot<\/a>

Article in today’s Guardian<\/p><\/div>\n

From interviews that were published last week by the Financial Times<\/a> and The Guardian<\/a>, I get the sense that the new President of the Royal Society, Professor Sir Paul Nurse, is almost as sick of the Musk affair as I am. He may well be regretting consenting to these interviews because they have re-ignited the debate about the Royal Society’s handling of concerns raised within and without about actions by Musk that are in apparent contravention of the code of conduct that Fellows are required to adhere to.<\/p>\n

From the various reactions reported in the Guardian this morning, the issue continues to divide opinion. But it’s also clear from the comments of those who spoke in support of Nurse’s defence of the Royal Society’s inaction that there is still a great deal of misunderstanding about the existence and meaning of their Code of Conduct and about the particulars of the concerns raised by Musk’s actions.<\/p>\n

In the interests of more open and informed discussion of this matter I thought I would provide the full copy of the comment that I provided to the Guardian, fragments of which appeared in this morning’s article (which I have edited lightly for clarity and to remove background material). The Guardian interview<\/a>\u00a0should be free to read; the FT piece<\/a> is probably for subscribers only, so I have pasted the relevant extract at the end of this piece).<\/p>\n

“Nurses\u2019s interviews were troubling in several respects. Overall I was surprised by the weakness of the positions he laid out.<\/p>\n

He said that the Royal Society should not make judgements about the character and behaviour of its fellows. But that statement is a direct contradiction of the fact that the Royal Society has a code of conduct for its fellows<\/a>. The code opens with the statement: \u201cFellowship and Foreign Membership of the Society is a privilege predicated on adherence to particular standards of conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nurse\u2019s claim that \u201cit is naive, frankly, to say that we should get rid of him because he\u2019s a bad person\u201d is the latest in a long series of attempts by the Royal Society to dodge the very real and substantial concerns that have been expressed by fellows and thousands of members of the scientific community about Musk\u2019s behaviour. It is disingenuous, frankly, to say that the concerns about Musk arise because some people think he\u2019s not very nice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nurse\u2019s contention that if the RS were to take action in respect of Musk role in defunding research as head of DOGE might create real difficulties if Patrick Vallance FRS (now Minister for Science in the UK government) were to oversee cuts in the science budget also miss the mark. All democratically-elected governments, including Trump\u2019s, have the right to set budgets as they and their legislatures see fit. But the issue here, which Nurse is ignoring, is that under Musk the cuts were implemented in a chaotic, ideologically-motivated and evidence-free fashion. Musk also public bragged about defunding USAID, an act that has already cost thousands of lives and, according to a study published by the Lancet<\/a> could cost up to to 14m more by 2030. In both these actions, Musk\u2019s conduct has run completely counter to the declared values of the Royal Society. And now we have the dismal news that a Fellow of the Royal Society runs a company that is enabling and profiting from the dissemination of child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n

To date, the RS has failed to provide a single word of explanation for their contention that Musk is not in breach of the code of conduct. Although Nurse, to his credit, did engage in correspondence with Musk about concerns raised by the scientific community, when he got a no-reply brush off from Musk, he meekly let the matter drop. Although in his Guardian interview he acknowledges the threat of rightwing populism which thrives on ignoring science\u2019s commitment to \u201cthe pursuit of truth, evidence, rational thinking [and] courteous debate\u201d, the feebleness and cowardliness of the Royal Society\u2019s response to Musk riding roughshod over their code and their values is truly depressing. It is not the full-throated defence of scientific values that we so desperately need in these troubled times.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what happens now? The Musk affair seems to be the zombie issue that, no matter how hard the Royal Society might wish, will just not die. I wrote back in June 2025 with suggestions for three steps forward<\/a> that the RS might make to repair its standing, only one of which has been half-taken since then.<\/p>\n

I remain committed to seeking a constructive way out of this impasse and am continuing to reflect. I hope to have further to say in my next post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Excerpt from FT article:<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Elon Musk should keep his UK Royal Society fellowship even though the Grok AI image generator developed by his company has generated sexualised images including of minors, the body\u2019s new president has said.<\/h5>\n
Sir Paul Nurse told the FT the explicit pictures were \u201ca disgrace\u201d but the national science academy should not start \u201cmaking judgments\u201d about the \u201ccharacter and behaviour\u201d of fellows, even if technology they created enabled unlawful acts.<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean we shouldn\u2019t criticise and criticise publicly \u2014 I\u2019m fine with that,\u201d Nurse said of Musk in an interview. \u201cBut I think it is naive, frankly, to say that we should get rid of him because he\u2019s a bad person. I\u2019m afraid there\u2019s many bad people around, but they have made scientific advances.\u201d<\/h5>\n
The 365-year-old institution was rocked in 2025 after two fellows quit in protest over Musk\u2019s continued membership and other scientists inside and outside the academy condemned the tech billionaire\u2019s behaviour.<\/h5>\n
The complaints included that he spread misinformation and bore responsibility for steep cuts to US scientific research institutions by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Musk left Doge in May last year.<\/h5>\n
The society held an extraordinary meeting of fellows in March but decided to take no disciplinary action against Musk, who was elected a fellow in 2018. It argued that judgments potentially seen as political would do \u201cmore harm than good\u201d.<\/h5>\n
The academy\u2019s code of conduct states that fellows must \u201cstrive to uphold the reputation of the society\u201d and heed that remarks made in a personal capacity could still affect it.<\/h5>\n
Nurse, then the society\u2019s president-elect, wrote to Musk as part of the response to the concerns. Nurse said he suggested to Musk that he resign his fellowship, but received no reply.<\/h5>\n
Musk has prompted fresh criticism over the images produced by xAI\u2019s chatbot tool Grok in response to user instructions. Lawmakers in the UK, EU and France have threatened his social media platform X, where the images are posted, with fines and bans.<\/h5>\n
On Friday access to Grok\u2019s image generation function was limited to paid subscribers, though Downing Street said the change \u201csimply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service\u201d.<\/h5>\n
Contacted for comment, xAI responded: \u201cLegacy media lies.\u201d The company has said it has taken down illegal AI-generated images of children.<\/h5>\n
On January 3, Musk\u00a0posted on X\u00a0that \u201canyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content\u201d.<\/h5>\n
Nurse, who was previously the Royal Society\u2019s president between 2010 and 2015, said the institution should only expel fellows if their science proved \u201cfaulty or fraudulent or highly defective\u201d.<\/h5>\n
\u201cYou see there Isaac Newton, behind you?\u201d he said, gesturing to a portrait in his office of the eminent mathematician, who was Royal Society president for 24 years during the early 18th century. \u201cHe was a very nasty piece of work, yet we revere him.\u201d<\/h5>\n
The society was not a \u201cdining club\u201d or \u201cpolitical party\u201d, Nurse said, noting that he was sure it had included \u201cmurderers\u201d and other criminals in the past.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From interviews that were published last week by the Financial Times and The Guardian, I get the sense that the new President of the Royal Society, Professor Sir Paul Nurse, is almost as sick of the Musk affair as I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3829"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3833,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829\/revisions\/3833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}