Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

The Royal Society is a venerable institution founded in 1660, whose original members included such eminent men as Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. It promotes science in many ways: administering grants, advising government, holding meetings and lectures, and publishing expert reports on scientific matters of public importance.  

There are currently around 1,800 Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society, all elected through a stringent and highly competitive process which includes nomination by two Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS), detailed scrutiny of the candidate's achievements and publications, reports by referees, and consideration by a committee of experts in their broad area of research.  Although most Fellows are elected on the basis of their scientific contributions, others are nominated on the basis of "wider contributions to science, engineering or medicine through leadership, organisation, scholarship or communication".

For many scientists, election to the Royal Society is the pinnacle of their scientific career. It establishes that their achievements are recognised as exceptional, and the title FRS brings immediate respect from colleagues. Of course, things do not always work out as they should. Some Fellows may turn out to have published fraudulent work, or go insane and start promoting crackpot ideas. Although there are procedures that allow a fellow to be expelled from the Royal Society, I have been told this has not happened for over 150 years. It seems that election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, like loss of virginity, is something that can't readily be reversed.

This brings us, then, to the case of Elon Musk, who was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018 on the basis of his technological achievements, notably in space travel and electrical vehicle development. Unfortunately, since that time, his interests have extended to using social media for political propaganda, while at the same time battling what he sees as "woke mind virus" and attacks on free speech. Whereas previously he seemed to agree with mainstream scientific opinion on issues such as climate change and medicine, over the past year or two, he's started promoting alternative ideas.   

In summer of 2024, a number of FRSs became concerned at how Musk was using his social media platform (previously Twitter, now termed X) to stir up racial unrest and anti-government sentiment in the UK. Notable tweets by him from this period included incendiary comments and frank misinformation, as documented in this Guardian article. 

This led to a number of Fellows expressing dismay that Musk had been elected. There was no formal consultation of the Fellowship but via informal email contacts, a group of 74 Fellows formulated a letter of concern that was sent in early August to the President of the Royal Society, raising doubts as to whether he was "a fit and proper person to hold the considerable honour of being a Fellow of the Royal Society". The letter specifically mentioned the way Musk had used his platform on X to make unjustified and divisive statements that served to inflame right-wing thuggery and racist violence in the UK. 

Somebody (not me!) leaked the letter to the Guardian, who ran a story about it on 23rd August.

I gather that at this point the Royal Society Council opted to consult a top lawyer to determine whether Musk's behaviour breached their Code of Conduct. The problem with this course of action is that if you are uncertain about doing something that seems morally right but may have consequences, then it is easy to find a lawyer who will advise against doing it. That's just how lawyers work. They're paid to rescue people from ethical impulses that may get them into trouble. And, sure enough, the lawyer determined that Musk hadn't breached the Code of Conduct. If you want to see if you agree, you can find the Code of Conduct here.

Many of the signatories of the letter, including me, were unhappy with this response. We set about assembling further evidence of behaviours incompatible with the Code of Conduct. There is a lot of material, which can be broadly divided into two categories, depending on whether it relates to "Scientific conduct" or "Principles".  

On Scientific conduct, the most relevant points from the Code of Conduct are:

2.6. Fellows and Foreign Members shall carry out their scientific research with regard to the Society's statement on research integrity and to the highest standards. 

2.10. Fellows and Foreign Members shall treat all individuals in the scientific enterprise collegially and with courtesy, including supervisors, colleagues, other Society Fellows and Foreign Members, Society staff, students and other early‐career colleagues, technical and clerical staff, and interested members of the public. 

2.11. Fellows and Foreign Members shall not engage in any form of discrimination, harassment, or bullying.

Most of those I've spoken to agree that a serious breach of these principles was in 2022, when Musk tweeted: "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci", thereby managing to simultaneously offend the LGBTQ community, express an antivaxx sentiment, and put Fauci, already under attack from antivaxxers, at further risk. Fauci was not a Fellow at the time these comments were made, but that should not matter given the scope of the statement is "individuals in the scientific community". This incident was covered by CBS News.

Now that the US election is over, Musk seems emboldened to ramp up his attacks. On 19th November 2024, he retweeted this to his millions of followers, followed by a compilation of attacks on Fauci on 21st November,

Neuralink

There are also questions about the management of Musk's research project, Neuralink, which involves developing a brain-computer interface to help people who are paralysed. While this is clearly a worthy goal, his approach to conducting research is characterised by refusal to let anyone interfere with how he does things. This has led to accusations of failure to adhere to regulatory procedures for Good Laboratory Practice. For instance, consider these quotes from this article: 

'I think what concerns people is that Neuralink could be cutting corners, and so far nobody has stopped them,' says Nick Ramsey, a clinical neuroscientist at University Medical Center Utrecht, in the Netherlands.  There’s an incredible push by Neuralink to bypass the conventional research world, and there’s little interaction with academics, as if they think that we’re on the wrong track—that we’re inching forward while they want to leap years forward.

In response to Musk's claim that no monkey had died because of Neuralink, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine wrote to the SEC, claiming Musk’s comments were false. The group said it had obtained veterinary records from Neuralink’s experiments showing that at least 12 young, healthy monkeys were euthanized as a result of problems with Neuralink’s implant. The group alleged that Musk’s comments are misleading investors, and urged SEC regulators to investigate Musk and Neuralink for securities fraud.

The problems with Neuralink do not stop with the ethics of the animals and the secrecy surrounding them. In a piece in Nature, various scientists were interviewed about the first human trial that was conducted earlier this year. The main concern was lack of transparency. Human trials are usually recorded in clinical.trials.gov, which was set up precisely to make it easier to track if studies had followed a protocol. Musk did not do this. His approach to the human trials again reflects his distaste for any regulations. But the regulations are there for a purpose, and one would expect a Fellow of the Royal Society to abide by them; otherwise we end up with scandals such as Theranos or the stem cell experiments by Macchiarini and Birchall. The ethics of this kind of trial also needs careful handling, especially in terms of the patient's understanding of possible adverse effects, their expectations of benefits, and the undertaking of researchers to provide long-term support for the prosthesis.

If we turn to the more general issues that come under Principles, then the Code of Conduct states: 

Fellows and Foreign Members shall not act or fail to act in any way which would undermine the Society's mission or bring the Society into disrepute.

 Here are some examples that I would regard as contrary to the Society's mission.

Promoting vaccine hesitation

The Royal Society has done good work promoting public understanding of vaccines, as with this blogpost by Charles Bangham FRS. In contrast, as described here, Musk has promoted vaccine conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine views on his platform. This Tweet had 85 million views:

Downplaying the climate emergency

In 2023 Musk played down the seriousness of climate change, and 2024 participated in a bizarre interview with Donald Trump, which dismayed climate experts. Among the commenters was Michael Mann, who said “It is sad that Elon Musk has become a climate change denier, but that’s what he is. He’s literally denying what the science has to say here.” Mann was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2024.

Spreading deep fakes and misinformation on X

As recently as 2022, the Royal Society published a report in which Frank Kelly (FRS) noted the high priority that the Royal Society gives to accurate scientific communication:

The Royal Society’s mission since it was established in 1660 has been to promote science for the benefit of humanity, and a major strand of that is to communicate accurately. But false information is interfering with that goal. It is accused of fuelling mistrust in vaccines, confusing discussions about tackling the climate crisis and influencing the debate about genetically modified crops. 

Earlier this month, Martin McKee wrote in the British Medical Journal:

 Musk’s reason for buying Twitter was to influence the social discourse. And influence he did—by using his enormous platform (203 million followers) to endorse Trump, spread disinformation about voter fraud and deep fakes of Kamala Harris, and amplify conspiracy theories about everything from vaccines to race replacement theory to misogyny.

The most recent development is the announcement that Musk is to be co-director of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, an allusion to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin) in the Trump Administration, with a brief to cut waste and bureaucracy. The future for US science is starting to look bleak, with Musk being given unfettered powers to cut budgets to NIH and NASA, among others.  This tweet, which he endorsed, indicates that rather than using objective evidence, the cuts will fall on those who have criticized Trump, who will find bowdlerized summaries of their work used to generate public outrage. The tweet reads:  "Here’s what the U.S. Government wasted $900 Billion of your tax dollars on in 2023. The Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) will fix this. America deserves leaders that prioritize sensible spending" before presenting a chart listing items for cuts, with unsourced descriptions of expenditure, including:

• Dr Fauci's monkey business on NIH's "monkey island":   $33,200,000 
• NIH's meth-head monkeys:  portion of $12,000,000 
• Dr Fauci's transgender monkey study: $477,121

I'm sad to say I agree with Alex Wild, Curator of Entomology at University of Texas Austin, who wrote a few days ago: "I hope federally funded scientists are preparing for large scale, bad faith attacks by Musk and his troll army.  It’s pretty clear the DOGE operation is going to take snippets of grant proposals and papers, present them out of context, and direct weaponized harassment of individual people."

What next?  

I've been told that in the light of the evolving situation, the Royal Society Council will look again at the case of Elon Musk. In conversations I have had with them, they emphasise that they must adhere to their own procedures, which are specified in the Statutes, and which involve a whole series of stages of legal scrutiny, committee evaluation, discussion with the Fellow in question, and ultimately a vote from the Fellowship, before a Fellow or Foreign Member could be expelled. While I agree that if you have a set of rules you should stick to them, I find the fact that nobody has been expelled for over 150 years telling. It does suggest that the Statutes are worded so that it is virtually impossible to do anything about Fellows who breach the Code of Conduct. In effect the Statutes serve a purpose of protecting the Royal Society from ever having to take action against one of its Fellows.

In the course of investigating this blogpost, I've become intimately familiar with the Code of Conduct, which requires me to "treat all individuals in the scientific enterprise collegially and with courtesy, including ... foreign Members". I'm not willing to treat Elon Musk "collegially and with courtesy". 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 modeling himself on a Bond villain, a man who has immeasurable wealth and power which he will use to threaten scientists who disagree with him. Accordingly, last week I resigned my FRS. I don't do this in the expectation of having any impact: in the context of over 350 years of Royal Society history, this is just a blip. I just feel far more comfortable to be dissociated from an institution that continues to honour this disreputable man.

Note: Comments will be accepted if they are by a named individual, civil, and on topic. They are moderated and there may be a delay before they appear online. 

 

PS. 1st Dec 2024. It seems many people did not read this far and I have deleted a lot of anonymous comments.  I will close this post to comments now, as I think nobody has anything new to say and I don't think anything will be gained by more to and fro.  Thanks for all the support - which outnumbers criticism by about 20:1.

A day out at 10 Downing Street

Yesterday, I attended a meeting at 10, Downing Street with Dominic Cummings, special advisor to Boris Johnson, for a discussion about science funding. I suspect my invitation will be regarded, in hindsight, as a mistake, and I hope some hapless civil servant does not get into trouble over it. I discovered that I was on the invitation list because of a recommendation by the eminent mathematician, Tim Gowers, who is someone who is venerated by Cummings. Tim wasn't able to attend the meeting, but apparently he is a fan of my blog, and we have bonded over a shared dislike of the evil empire of Elsevier.  I had heard that Cummings liked bold, new ideas, and I thought that I might be able to contribute something, given that science funding is something I have blogged about. 

The invitation came on Tuesday and, having confirmed that it was not a spoof, I spent some time reading Cummings' blog, to get a better idea of where he was coming from. The impression is that he is besotted with science, especially maths and technology, and impatient with bureaucracy. That seemed promising common ground.

The problem, though, is that as a major facilitator of Brexit in 2016, who is now persisting with the idea that Brexit must be achieved "at any cost", he is doing immense damage, because science transcends national boundaries. Don't just take my word for it: it's a message that has been stressed by the President of the Royal Society, the Government's Chief Scientific Advisor, the Chair of the Wellcome Trust, the President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Director of the Crick Institute, among others. 

The day before the meeting, I received an email to say that the topic of discussion would be much narrower than I had been led to believe. The other invitees were four Professors of Mathematics and the Director of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. We were sent a discussion document written by one of the professors outlining a wish list for improvements in funding for academic mathematics in the UK. I wasn't sure if I was a token woman: I suspect Cummings doesn't go in for token women and that my invite was simply because it had been assumed that someone recommended by Gowers would be a mathematician. I should add that my comments here are in a personal capacity and my views should not be taken as representing those of the University of Oxford.

The meeting started, rather as expected, with Cummings saying that we would not be talking about Brexit, because "everyone has different views about Brexit" and it would not be helpful. My suspicion was that everyone around the table other than Cummings had very similar views about Brexit, but I could see that we'd not get anywhere arguing the point. So we started off feeling rather like a patient who visits a doctor for medical advice, only to be told "I know I just cut off your leg, but let's not mention that."

The meeting proceeded in a cordial fashion, with Cummings expressing his strong desire to foster mathematics in British universities, and asking the mathematicians to come up with their "dream scenario" for dramatically enhancing the international standing of their discipline over the next few years. As one might expect, more funding for researchers at all levels, longer duration of funding, plus less bureaucracy around applying for funding were the basic themes, though Brexit-related issues did keep leaking in to the conversation – everyone was concerned about difficulties of attracting and retaining overseas talent, and about loss of international collaborations funded by the European Research Council. Cummings was clearly proud of the announcement on Thursday evening about easing of visa restrictions on overseas scientists, which has potential to go some way towards mitigating some of the problems created by Brexit. I felt, however, that he did not grasp the extent to which scientific research is an international activity, and breakthroughs depend on teams with complementary skills and perspectives, rather than the occasional "lone genius".  It's not just about attracting "the very best minds from around the world" to come and work here.

Overall, I found the meeting frustrating. First, I felt that Cummings was aware that there was a conflict between his twin aims of pursuit of Brexit and promotion of science, but he seemed to think this could be fixed by increasing funding and cutting regulation. I also wonder where on earth the money is coming from. Cummings made it clear that any proposals would need Treasury approval, but he encouraged the mathematicians to be ambitious, and talked as if anything was possible. In a week when we learn the economy is shrinking for the first time in years, it's hard to believe he has found the forest of magic money trees that are needed to cover recent spending announcements, let alone additional funding for maths.

Second, given Cummings' reputation, I had expected a far more wide-ranging discussion of different funding approaches. I fully support increased funding for fundamental mathematics, and did not want to cut across that discussion, so I didn't say much. I had, however, expected a bit more evidence of creativity. In his blog, Cummings refers to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is widely admired as a model for how to foster innovation. DARPA was set up in 1958 with the goal of giving the US superiority in military and other technologies. It combined blue-skies and problem-oriented research, and was immensely successful, leading to the development of the internet, among other things. In his preamble, Cummings briefly mentioned DARPA as a useful model. Yet, our discussion was entirely about capacity-building within existing structures.

Third, no mention was made of problem-oriented funding. Many scientists dislike having governments control what they work on, and indeed, blue-skies research often generates quite unexpected and beneficial outcomes. But we are in a world with urgent problems that would benefit from focussed attention of an interdisciplinary, and dare I say it, international group of talented scientists. In the past, it has taken world wars to force scientists to band together to find solutions to immediate threats. The rapid changes in the Arctic suggest that the climate emergency should be treated just like a war - a challenge to be tackled without delay. We should be deploying scientists, including mathematicians, to explore every avenue to mitigating the effects of global heating – physical and social – right now. Although there is interesting research on solar geoengineering going on at Harvard, it is clear that, under the Trump administration, we aren't going to see serious investment from the USA in tackling global heating. And, in any case, a global problem as complex as climate needs a multi-pronged solution. The economist Marianna Mazzucato understands this: her proposals for mission-oriented research take a different approach to the conventional funding agencies we have in the UK. Yet when I asked whether climate research was a priority in his planning, Cummings replied "it's not up to me". He said that there were lots of people pushing for more funding for research on "climate change or whatever", but he gave the impression that it was not something he would give priority to, and he did not display a sense of urgency. That's surprising in someone who is scientifically literate and has a child.

In sum, it's great that we have a special advisor who is committed to science. I'm very happy to see mathematics as a priority funding area. But I fear Dominic Cummings overestimates the extent to which he can mitigate the negative consequences of Brexit, and it is particularly unfortunate that his priorities do not include the climate emergency that is unfolding.

The Do It Yourself (DIY) conference

This blogpost was inspired by a tweet from Natalie Jester, a PhD student at the School for Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol, raising this question:

I agreed with her, noting that the main costs were venue hire and speaker expenses, but that prices were often hiked by organisers using lavish venues and aiming to make a profit from the meeting. I linked to my earlier post about the eye-watering profits that the Society for Neuroscience makes from its meetings.  In contrast, the UK's Experimental Psychology Society uses its income membership fees and the journal to support meetings three times a year, and doesn't even charge a registration fee.

Pradeep Reddy Raamana, a Canadian Open Neuroscience scholar from Toronto responded, drawing my attention to a thread on this very topic from a couple of weeks ago.

There were useful suggestions in the thread, including reducing costs by spending less on luxurious accommodation for organisers, and encouraging PIs to earmark funds for their junior staff to cover their conference attendance costs.

That's all fine, but my suggestion is for a radically different approach, which is to find a small group of 2-3 like-minded people and organise your own conference. I'm sure that people will respond by saying that they have to go to the big society meetings in their field in order to network and promote their research.  There's nothing in my suggestions that would preclude you also doing this (though see climate emergency point below). But I suspect that if you go down the DIY route, you may get a lot more out of the experience than you would by attending a big, swish society conference: both in terms of personal benefits and career prospects.

I'm sure people will want to add to these ideas, but here's my experience, which is based on running various smallish meetings, including being local organiser for occasional EPS meetings over the years. I was also, with Katharine Perera, Gina Conti-Ramsden and Elena Lieven,  a co-organiser of the Child Language Seminar (CLS) in Manchester back in the 1980s.  That is perhaps the best example of a DIY conference, because we had no infrastructure and just worked it out as we went along.  The CLS was a very ad hoc thing: each year, the meeting organisers tried to find someone who was prepared to run the next CLS at their own institution the following year. Despite this informality, the CLS – now with the more appropriate name of Child Language Symposium – is still going strong in 2019. From memory, we had around 120 people from all over the world at the Manchester meeting. Numbers have grown over the years, but in general if you were doing a DIY meeting for the first time, I'd aim to keep it small; no more than 200 people.

The main costs you will incur in organising a meeting are:

• Venue
• Refreshments
• Reception/Conference dinner
• Expenses for speakers
• Administrative costs
• Publicity

Your income to cover these costs will come from:

• Grants (optional)
• Registration fees

So the main thing to do at the start is to sit down and do some sums to ensure you will break even. Here's my experiences on each of these categories:

Venue

You do not need to hold the meeting at a swanky hotel. Your university is likely to have conference facilities: check out their rates. Consider what you need in terms of lecture theatre capacity, break-out rooms, rooms for posters/refreshments.  You need to factor in cost of technical support. My advice is you should let people look after their own accommodation: at most just give them a list of places to stay. This massively cuts down on your workload.

Refreshments

The venue should be able to offer teas/coffees. You will probably be astounded at what institutions charge for a cup of instant coffee and a boring biscuit, but I recommend you go with the flow on that one. People do need their coffee breaks, however humble the refreshments.

Reception/Conference dinner

A welcome reception is a good way of breaking the ice on the first evening. It need not be expensive: a few bottles of wine plus water and soft drinks and some nibbles is adequate. You could just find a space to do this and provide the refreshments yourselves: most of the EPS meetings I've been to just have some bottles provided and people help themselves. This will be cheaper than rates from conference organisers.

You don't have to have a conference dinner. They can be rather stuffy affairs, and a torment for shy people who don't know anyone. On the other hand, when they work well, they provide an opportunity to get to know people and chat about work informally. My experience at EPS and CLS is that the easiest way to organise this is to book a local restaurant. They will probably suggest a set meal at a set price, with people selecting options in advance. This will involve some admin work – see below.

Expenses for speakers

For a meeting like CLS there are a small number of invited plenary speakers. This is your opportunity to invite the people you really want to hear from. It's usual to offer economy class travel and accommodation in a good hotel. This does not need to be lavish, but it should have quiet rooms with ensuite bathroom, large, comfortable bed, desk area, sufficient power supply, adequate aircon/heating, and free wifi. Someone who has flown around the world to come to your meeting is not going to remember you fondly if they are put up in a cramped bed and breakfast. I've had some dismal experiences over the years and now check TripAdvisor to make sure I've not been booked in somewhere awful.  I still remember attending a meeting where an eminent speaker had flown in from North America only to find herself put in student accommodation: she turned around and booked herself into a hotel, and left with dismal memories of the organisers.

Pradeep noted that conferences could save costs if speakers covered their own expenses. This is true and many do have funds that they could use for this purpose. But don't assume that is the case: if they do have funds, you'd have to consider why they'd rather spend that money on coming to your meeting, than on something else. A diplomatic way of discussing this is to say in the letter of invitation that you can cover economy class travel, accommodation, dinner and registration. However, if they have funds that could be used for their travel, then that will make it possible to offer some sponsored places to students.

Administration

It's easy to overlook this item, but fortunately it is now relatively simple to handle registrations with online tools such as EventBrite. They take a cut if you charge for registration, but that's well worth it in my experience, in terms of saving a lot of grief with spreadsheets. If you are going for a conference dinner, then booking for this can be bundled in with registration fee.

In the days of Manchester CLS, email barely existed and nobody expected a conference website, but nowadays that is mandatory, and so you will need someone willing to set it up and populate it with information about venue and programme. As with my other advice, no need to make it fancy; just ensure there is the basic information that people need, with a link to a place for registration.

There are further items like setting up the Eventbrite page, making conference badges, and ensuring smooth communications with venue, speakers and restaurant. Here the main thing is to delegate responsibility so everyone knows what they have to do. I've quite often experienced the situation where I've agreed to speak at a meeting only to find that nobody has contacted me about the programme or venue and it's only a week to go.

On the day, you'll be glad of assistants who can do things like shepherding people into sessions, taking messages, etc. You can offer free registration to local students in return for them acting in this role.

Publicity

I've listed this under costs, but I've never spent on this for meetings I've organised, and given social media, I don't think you'll need to.

Grants

I've put optional for grants, as you can cover costs without a grant. But every bit of money helps and it's possible that one of the organisers will have funding that can be used. However, my advice is to check out options for grant funding from a society or other funder. National funding bodies such as UK research councils or NIH may have pots of money you can apply for: the sums are typically small and applying for the money is not onerous. Even if a society doesn't have a grants stream for meetings, they may be willing to sponsor places for specific categories of attendees: early-career people or those from resource-poor countries.

Local businesses or publishers are often willing to sponsor things like conference bags, in return for showing their logo. You can often charge publishers for a stand.

Registration

Once you have thought through the items under Expenditure, and have an idea of whether you'll have grant income, you will be in a good position to work out what you need to charge those attending to cover your costs. The ideal is to break even, but it's important not to overspend and so you should estimate how many people are likely to register in each category, and work out a registration fee that will cover this, even if numbers are disappointing.

What can go wrong?

• Acts of God. I still remember a meeting at the Royal Society years ago where a hurricane swept across Britain overnight and around 50% of those attending couldn't make it. Other things like strikes, riots, etc. can happen, but I recommend you just accept these are risks not under your control.
• Clash of dates. This is under your control to some extent. Before you settle on a date, ask around to check there isn't a clash with other meetings or with religious holidays.
• Speaker pulls out. I have organised meetings where a speaker pulled out at the last minute – there will usually be a good reason for this such as illness. So long as it is one person, this can be managed, and may indeed provide an opportunity to do something useful with the time, such as holding a mini-Hackathon to brainstorm ideas about a specific problem..
• You make a loss. This is a scary prospect but should not happen with adequate planning, as noted above. Main thing is to make sure you confirm what your speaker expenses will be so you don't get any nasty surprises at the last minute.
• Difficult people. This is a minor one, but I remember wise words of Betty Byers Brown, a collaborator from those old Manchester days, who told me that 95% of the work of a conference organiser is caused by 5% of those attending. Just knowing that is the case makes it easier to deal with.
• Unhappy people. People coming from far away who know nobody can have a miserable time at a conference, but with planning, you can help them integrate in a group. Rather than formal entertainment, consider having social activities that ensure everyone is included. Also, have an explicit anti-harassment policy – there are plenty of examples on the web.
• Criticism. Whatever you do there will be people who complain – why didn't you do X rather than Y?  This can be demoralising if you have put a lot of work into organising something.  Nevertheless, make sure you do ask people for feedback after the meeting: if there are things that could be done better next time, you need to know about them. For what it's worth, the most common complaints I hear after meetings are that speakers go on too long and there is not enough time for questions and discussion. It's important to have firm chairing, and to set up the schedule to encourage interaction.

What can go right?

• Running a conference carries an element of risk and stress, but it's an opportunity to develop organisational skills, and this can be a great thing to put on your CV. The skills you need to plan a conference are not so different from those to budget for a grant: you have to work out how to optimise the use of funds, anticipating expenses and risks.
• Bonding with co-organisers. If you pick your co-organisers wisely, you may find that the experience of working together to solve problems is enjoyable and you learn a lot.
• You can choose the topics for your meeting and get to invite the speakers you most want to hear. As a young researcher organising a small meeting, I got to know people I'd invited as speakers in a way that would not be possible if I was just attending a big meeting organised by a major society.
• You can do it your way. You can decide if you want to lower costs for specific groups. You can make sure that the speakers are diverse, and can experiment with different approaches to get away from the traditional format of speakers delivering a lecture to an audience. For examples see this post and comments below it.
• The main thing is that if you are in control, you can devise your meeting to ensure it achieves what scientific meetings are supposed to achieve: scholarly communication and interaction to spark ideas and collaborations. My memories of meetings I have organised as an early-career academic have been high points in my career, which is why I am so keen to encourage others to do this.

But! .... Climate emergency

The elephant in this particular room is air travel. Academics are used to zipping around the world to go to conferences, at a time when we are increasingly recognising the harm this is doing to our planet. My only justification for writing this post at the current time is that it may encourage people to go to smaller, more-focused meetings. But I'm trying to cut down on air travel substantially and in the longer term, suspect that we will need to move to virtual meetings.

Groups of younger researchers, and those from outside Europe and the UK, have a role to play in working out how to do this. I hope to encourage this by urging people to be bold and to venture outside the big conference arenas where junior people and those from marginalised groups can feel they are invisible. Organising a small meeting teaches you a lot of necessary skills that may be used in devising more radical formats. The future of conferences is going to change and you need to be shaping it.

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