Today, one year has passed since I published an open letter , signed by almost 3,500 members of the scientific community, asking the Royal Society to deal meaningfully with breaches of its code of conduct by Elon Musk FRS.

Article in today’s Guardian 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 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

I read recently – I can’t remember where – that people who say “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like” actually do know quite a bit about art. More than average at any rate.

Micro-reviews of the first 12 books I read in 2025 My annual round-up of the books I read in 2025 was pre-empted by a request from Research Professional News (RPN) to write 250 words on my favourite reads of the past year.

Green and gold of autumn My annual selection of favourites from the photographs I took in the past year is now available on Flickr. Do people still use Flickr? I have broken my usual rule of not including family photos because of the very exceptional and very happy occurrences of both of our daughters’ weddings this year. It would have felt wrong somehow to omit pictures that captured the sheer joy of these events.

Ironically, in the week when my co-authors and I are publishing a paper proposing framework to tackle the reluctance of researchers to publish negative results, one of the most important null results of recent times – the lack of any credible link … Continue reading →

Four months after my open letter calling on the Royal Society to take action over Elon Musk FRS’s breaches of their code of conduct had attracted thousands of signatures from the scientific community, but only a very muted response from that most … Continue reading →

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has published an article about my open letter to the Royal Society regarding the evident contraventions of its code of conduct by one of their Fellows, Elon Musk FRS. Unfortunately, Frederick Attenborough’s piece contains errors, omissions and speculative rhetoric which together contrive to misconstrue the meaning and intent of my letter.

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 March. The final tally of signatories was 3494 (please see bottom of post for the full list).  Earlier today, I sent the letter below to Professor Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society.

There is an air of defeatism in progressive circles today, the day Donald Trump will be sworn in for a second term as President of the United States of America.

With a handful of notable exceptions, my book reading in the past year has not been an altogether happy experience. Micro reviews on Twitter – click for a larger image on Flickr I worked my way through 18 titles in all, work being the operative verb in many cases. That low tally is about average for me, a cyclically unimpressive feat. My excuses are two-fold this year.