offend v.t. disoblige

This is hardly the first occasion on which physicists have made disobliging comments about philosophy. Last year at a Google “Zeitgeist conference” in England, Stephen Hawking declared that philosophy was “dead.” (Jim Holt, “Physicists, Stop the Churlishness,” The New York Times, 6/8/2012.)

Disoblige can also be a synonym for insult or affront