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Fiona fox's blog
This article was first published in Research Professional News:
The call to revoke Elon Musk’s fellowship of the Royal Society grows ever louder. Lots of my favourite scientists are among the 2,000-plus who have signed a letter expressing “dismay at the [society’s] continued silence and apparent inaction”.
Dorothy Bishop, who handed back her own fellowship over Musk’s anti-scientific and personally abusive statements, is one of my heroes. She has done more to challenge bad science and misinformation than anyone I know.
And yet I am wary.
I’m as dismayed as anyone at the US government’s attacks on science, and I’m scared of the long-term impact of its cuts to research budgets, deleting of public health data and silencing of scientists. I worry what will happen to wider public understanding of vaccines, climate change and other issues if a government is packed full of people questioning the scientific consensus.
I also fear for openness in science. While we wait to see the full scale and impact of the restrictions that US president Donald Trump’s administration will impose on scientists, self-censorship and a climate of fear are already taking hold in the research community.
There is a fading placard in our office that I took on the 2017 March for Science, held when Trump last took power. It reads: “If it’s not open, it’s not science.” I believe that to my core.
The big question
So why am I not immediately signing the joint letter or, as a fellow myself, supporting those who are calling for Musk’s expulsion at a society meeting on 3 March that has been called to discuss the matter?
My caution stems from something I have been thinking about for years—should science get involved in politics?
I don’t mean should scientists work in government, advise politicians and lobby for evidence-based policies. I think they should, and the UK’s system of scientific advice for government is rightly the envy of the world.
What I mean is: should scientists, in their capacity as scientists rather than private citizens, advocate for particular political policies and express support for specific political parties?
I followed this debate for years without deciding which side I was on. That changed last year, after I was privileged to be made visiting professor of science communication at Heidelberg University in Germany.
Sacrificing trust
Tasked with running several seminars on topics of my choice, one of the subjects I chose was: should scientists be political advocates?
After reading and talking to people from all sides of the debate, I ended up believing that scientists should try very hard to stay politically neutral.
In a nutshell, my argument is that the public trusts scientists more than politicians because it believes they are impartial and objective experts. Scientists who stray beyond the evidence and become campaigners or advocates for particular policies risk losing that trust.
I’m not going to pretend that all the evidence is on my side: like so many issues, there is conflicting evidence. But I was persuaded by some compelling studies, which the scientific community should consider when discussing these issues.
These include a 2023 paper published in Nature Human Behaviour, which shows that Trump supporters said they would trust the science coming out of Nature, and scientists in general, less after being told about that journal’s endorsement of Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy in 2020.
Another study, carried out in Germany and published in 2024, showed that participants tend to trust scientists who advocate for specific policies, such as closing schools to control Covid-19, less than those who simply present the evidence but leave the decisions to policymakers.
Pick your battles
My young Heidelberg medical students disagreed passionately, arguing that public health’s goals of reducing health inequalities makes it innately political. But some did accept my counter-argument that scientists being overtly political might result in a loss of trust in public health messages in the marginalised and poor communities they seek to help.
My worry is that ejecting Musk from the Royal Society would be seen as a political move. That said, I could be persuaded that there are other good reasons to expel him.
One friend says Musk’s demonisation of former US chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, a scientist who already lives with death threats, is beyond the pale. Others say his behaviour clearly violates the rules of fellowship. I will listen to all the arguments.
I also note, though, that in the week where eminent scientists are privately mobilising against Musk, my colleagues and I at the Science Media Centre have struggled to persuade leading scientists to publicly call out the attacks on science in the US.
Arguably, a better use of the Royal Society’s global influence and that of its fellows would be to explain exactly how the measures touted by the US government could damage public health and the environment for decades to come.
Playing the ball, in other words, might be less immediately satisfying than playing the man. But it might do more good.
My final lecture in Heidelberg asked about scientists’ role in an age of polarisation and misinformation. My answer was that the public interest is best served by scientists staying out of politics, doing the best science they can do and communicating it openly without fear or favour.
This piece contains the thoughts of the author rather than representing the work or policy of the Science Media Centre.