Elon Musk sparks crisis talks at UK's elite Royal Society

More than 150 members of the UK's Royal Society have urged the elite scientific academy to "step up its efforts to advocate for science and scientists" amid a row over one of is fellows - Elon Musk.

Over the last nine months, many scientists have raised concerns about the controversial billionaire's behaviour, which has been called a "threat to science".

The meeting on Monday evening did not result in his expulsion, but it has drawn the world's oldest scientific academy into a divisive, political row.

The campaign to revoke Mr Musk's membership centres on suggestions, from a growing number of fellows, that the billionaire's actions are "incompatible" with the society's own code of conduct.

Mr Musk has overseen unprecedented funding cuts to scientific research in the US, in his senior role in President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (or Doge), Mr Musk.

He has also been accused of sharing misinformation on his social media platform, X.

In a statement after the meeting, the Royal Society addressed those issues, saying that members who attended were particularly concerned about the fate of scientists in the US, "amid threats of radical cutbacks in research funding".

The Society agreed to "look at potential further actions" to "counter the misinformation and ideologically motivated attacks on both science and scientists".

It is 250 years since a member of the Royal Society was ejected: German scientist and writer Rudolf Erich Raspe, who was accused of theft and fraud.

So the rift among the membership, caused by Mr Musk and his public pronouncements, could be a historic turning point for this most elite of scientific academies.

Two eminent scientists have resigned their fellowships in protest - Dr Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University and Prof Andrew Millar from University of Edinburgh.

More than than 3,300 scientists also put their names to a letter, written by Prof Stephen Curry, emeritus professor of structural biology at Imperial College London, who is not a fellow, that expressed "deep concern" about the billionaire's fellowship and the society's "continued silence and apparent inaction" with regard to the controversy.