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A former winner of the Royal Society’s prestigious Michael Faraday Prize has returned the award over its failure to take stronger action against Elon Musk, a fellow of the UK academy, for presiding over “onslaughts on US science”.
Andrea Sella, who received the 2014 Faraday award, criticised the society for failing to censure Musk over funding cuts to leading US institutions, and attacks on individuals such as former top health official Anthony Fauci.
“I am appalled that the Royal Society should have stood by in silence,” said Sella, a chemist at UCL who won the Faraday award for his communication of science. “Many of my academic colleagues are equally stunned by the society’s failure to even talk about the issue in public,” he told the Financial Times.
In March, the 365-year-old society said it would take no disciplinary action against Musk. The society said any judgments it issued that were potentially seen as political would do “more harm than good”.
Sella is the latest scientist to criticise the society’s position. Two fellows — Dorothy Bishop and Andrew Millar — have both resigned from the society over the issue so far, while more than 3,000 scientists have signed a letter criticising the society’s inaction.
Sella said he had made his decision after listening to a lecture late last month by 2024 Faraday prize winner Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist who has campaigned against health disinformation in his native South Africa.
Musk, who was also born in South Africa, has been accused by many researchers of allowing his social media company X to become a forum for scientific disinformation. Royal Society code of conduct rules state fellows must “strive to uphold the reputation of the society”, adding that remarks made in a personal capacity could still impact it.
Sella said he would return his silver gilt Faraday medal and donate the inflation-adjusted equivalent of the prize money — which is now £2,500 annually — to Caprisa, the HIV/Aids research organisation Karim co-founded.
“There comes a moment where all of us must draw a line,” Sella said. “This was made elegantly clear by my Faraday successor . . . having listened to his lecture, I feel that that moment has come.”
The society said: “Professor Andrea Sella is an exemplary science communicator. The Royal Society greatly regrets his decision to return the 2014 Michael Faraday Prize.”
Musk oversaw steep cuts this year to US scientific research through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency that he led. He previously also called for the prosecution of Fauci, who helped lead the US government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and often clashed with President Donald Trump during his first term in office.
Sir Adrian Smith, the society’s president, said in March that it would “step up advocacy for science and challenge attacks on science and scientists, particularly in the United States”.
The position was guided by views expressed by members of the society’s more than 1,500-strong fellowship, including at a special meeting earlier in March, he added.
Sir Paul Nurse, the society’s president-elect, had written to Musk, Smith said, giving no details of the message.
The correspondence with Musk was private, the society told the FT on Monday. It had “repeatedly spoken out against threats to science from funding pressures, ideological agendas, and misinformation”, it said. “What is happening in the US is bad for science and that is bad for everyone.”
Musk, who formally left Trump’s administration late last month, has made no direct comment about the Royal Society debate. In March, the tech billionaire said only “craven, insecure fools” cared about “awards and memberships”, after the Nobel Prize-winning artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton called for his expulsion from the society.
Musk said it was “carelessly ignorant, cruel and false” for Hinton to accuse him of doing “huge damage” to scientific institutions in the US.
