Scientist Resigns UK's Royal Society Over Elon Musk's Continuing Fellowship (Image https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/)

Professor Dorothy Bishop, a leading scientist at the University of Oxford, has resigned from the UK’s national academy of sciences over concerns about Elon Musk’s continuing fellowship. Bishop, emeritus professor of developmental neuropsychology and a leading expert on children’s communication disorders, said she handed back her Royal Society fellowship.

Speaking to The Guardian, the professor said her move was a gut reaction. She said having Musk in the Royal Society felt like a “contradiction of all the values of the Royal Society. And I didn’t really want to have anything to do with it.

Bishop also added that she may not be able to keep up the Society’s code of conduct, which stresses the need for fellows to treat each other with courtesy.

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“What I said to them was, I am not going to be polite and nice to Elon Musk, I am afraid, so I can’t keep to the code of  conduct,” she said.

In her blog post, Bishop said she did not expect her resigning to make an impact, but it made her feel more comfortable.

“Any pleasure I may take in the distinction of the honour of an FRS is diminished by the fact it is shared with someone who appears to be modelling himself on a Bond villain, a man who has immeasurable wealth and power, which he will use to threaten scientists who disagree with him,” she wrote.

While Bishop has not explicitly cited any incidents, last year, Musk threatened to sue a group of researchers for the non-profit Centre for Countering Digital Hate, whose work revealed that since the Tesla owner bought X, there has been an increase in hate speech on the platform.

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Elon Musk was elected as the Royal Society fellow in 2018, in recognition of his work and impact in the space and electric vehicle industries.

In August this year, The Guardian reported that a number of fellows had written to the Royal Society expressing concern over the tech billionaire’s comments regarding unrest in the UK and raising the possibility of removing his fellowship.