I used to like Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not any more. He is, like Obama, a blowhard. An arrogant, pompous blowhard who plays fast and loose with facts. Over at The Federalist Sean Davis has written a number of articles that reveal just what a putz Tyson is. Tyson spends much of his time convincing people how intelligent he is and how much less intelligent than him you are. Tyson took a swipe at both members of Congress and journalists and that might have instigated the series of articles taking Tyson to task.
Tyson apparently fabricated a news headline and doubled down on it by abusing statistics:
Those are just minor beefs, though. My real beef is with his blatantly incorrect use of statistics. Take a look at the alleged headline one more time: “Half the schools in the district are below average.” The reaction that statement is supposed to elicit is something along the lines of “Well of course half are below average LOL that’s so stupid OMG.
”Except it’s not, because there’s a pretty big difference between a mean and a median. The mean is a mere average of a set of values. The median is the middle point of a set of numbers. It’s such an easy and basic distinction to grasp that one wonders why it so easily slipped through the fingers of the world’s greatest scientist.
Davis then discovered that Tyson engaged in a lot more than just that:
Neil deGrasse Tyson may be a fabulous scientist, and a consummate showman, but he’s downright terrible at accurately quoting people. Or, if you’re a “glass half full” kind of person, you might say that Neil deGrasse Tyson is pretty amazing at needlessly fabricating quotes and scenarios to showcase his own brilliance.
We’ve already established that a newspaper headline touted for years by Tyson likely doesn’t exist. We’ve also established that the exact quote he uses to bash members of Congressas being stupid also doesn’t exist. And then we established that the details within one of Tyson’s favorite anecdotes — a story of how he bravely confronted a judge about his mathematical illiteracy while serving on jury duty — seem to change every time Tyson tells the story.
Tyson routinely misquotes George W. Bush and then bashes Bush for the fabricated quotes;
Tyson butchered the quote. He butchered the date. He butchered the context. He butchered the implication. And he butchered the biblical allusion, which was to the prophet Isaiah, not the book of Genesis (you can tell Bush was alluding to Isaiah because he explicitly said he was referencing Isaiah).
Bush’s statement about the Creator had nothing to do with making “us” look better than “them”: it was an attempt to comfort the families who lost loved ones in the crash. They weren’t nameless creatures who passed anonymously; their ultimate Creator, the one who knit them together in their mothers’ wombs, mourned them by name. Heck, that same Creator even gave up his one and only Son that those lost souls might one day be reconciled to God through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. It was a message of hope and unity, not a message of division authored in the fog of war.
Tyson’s falsehoods didn’t stop there, though. After deliberately slandering Bush by attributing to him a quote he never made, Tyson launched into another tirade about how he was selected, by Bush, mind you, to be on a committee to select recipients of the National Medals of Science and Technology. The point of that story? That Tyson is way smarter than Bush, who Tyson intimated was too stupid to even read the citations of the awards. But if you watch the video of the event, you’ll notice that the reason Bush didn’t read the citations is because he was too busy personally awarding the medals and shaking the hands of the guests of honor while an emcee read the citations:
Tyson apparently responded and defended his inaccuracies as being acceptable when delivering his message to audiences, probably because he thinks they’re stupid as well.
Thanks for your interest in my work. Just some background: When I am invited to give a talk, especially to an audience that is not the general public, but to a specific gathering of people within a trade, I tune the contents for that audience, for that time, and for that place.
Well, he might fabricate stories but at least they’re personalized.
Davis:
So, contrary to what Tyson claimed about how nuanced and subtle and unique and contextual his presentation last week was, we have evidence that he’s been recycling the same tired trope and same non-existent quotes for years. Like this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one. The most baffling aspect of the whole thing, though, is why he feels the need to manufacture proof of how journalists and politicians are bad at math. Of course they’re bad at math. Of course they’re not very bright at a whole host of things.Proving that water is wet, however, should not be this difficult. All you need to do to prove that politicians are stupid is pay attention. Or, if that’s too hard, you can spend 5 seconds on Google. Likely fewer if you know what you’re doing.
The sycophantic liberals at Wikipedia are permitting none of this to appear.
Honestly, this is offensive. Davis used the expression “moral preening” and it fits perfectly. It’s one thing to make up quotes and events. It’s another to cast someone else as stupid using that phony information. No self-respecting scientist repeatedly uses inaccurate information for any kind of message. Tyson proves himself to be just one more self-absorbed liberal blowhard and I will spend not one more minute watching or listening to him again.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Sadly, deGrasse is supposedly a scientist.
When he tailors his lies to his audience however, he dilutes any actual science in his content.
As his lies get exposed in non-science things, his credibility as a scientist goes down, down, down.
When he tried to become this generation’s Carl Sagan with Cosmos the re-do he sounded pretty good.
But now he’s ruined all that with these awful and unnecessary lies.
He’s now in the ”don’t trust and do verify,” list of scientists you can’t trust.
I can’t recall now what annoyed me, but I was so put off by Tyson’s Cosmos reboot in the very first episode that I didn’t even watch the rest of it.
@Jim+S: I’m with you. I don’t remember what it was originally, but it was so odious it turned me off to him immediately.
I quit watching his Cosmos show when it was so boring to me. One thing I learned a long time ago, is that documentary type shows owe at least 50% to the narrator, and his tone of voice hardly ever changes. I expect him to be appointed to a science post in the obama administration.
@Smorgasbord: Could be the next head of NASA if he’s deferential enough to Muslims?
Tyson is a pseudo-scientist and a typical intellectual-elitist along the lines of Al Gore, blinded by his own ideological dogma. He is a self important boor who only considered information that supports his beliefs.
Dr an is not a blowhard and he never makes any mistakes and never misquotes anyonthat us why he is better than Tyson
And he has 70 peer reviewed published papers !
I gave up on Tyson a long while ago speaking on any topic, including his own field. He comes across being out of his depth.
I love physics and cosmology as a hobbyist. And I have to tell you flat out… the De Grasse COSMOS series was a HUGE disappointment and anyone that knows the original series would agree. So lame! I fell asleep in the first three episodes and finally just gave up and genuinely lost interest. The series meanders and goes no where with any inspiration.
But DeGrasse himself is an arrogant blow hard. That is a perfect description for him. I interrupts people when he is on a panel and tries to speak over others. He think he is “so cute” and “witty” when ever he speaks, it makes you want to just gag… He think he is so “neat”… it is broadcasted over his body language undeniably.
He came to Seattle in 2014 and I swear to all that read this, it was the biggest waste of $150 of my life. The guy spent two hours on stage in front of a packed audience, … talking about himself and mostly just,.. talking to hear himself talk?! He made no inspirational points or comments about cosmology or science at all?!! He just blabbed for two hours about his deal with Fox Networks, his Cosmos opportunity that he seems to have convinced himself , was historical or something… and stamps. He talked for about 45 minutes about postage stamps and made some kind of weak unrelated point, but I never quite got what that was… mostly I just sat there and my date and I shook our heads asking, “what the hell is this?”… He is way, way, into himself.
Go home DeGrasse,… you had your moment in the spot light and you blew it. You suck and I want my money back. I don’t want to pay $150 to watch you masturbate with your narcissism.
All the other similar, high profile physicists are better and more legitimate then you. You just got lucky and then like a child, didn’t know how to honor your fame and opportunity. Get off the stage, your embarrassment to science. I am sure your colleagues feel the same way.
Mr Tyson might know a lot about astronomy and science however, the problem comes when I try to compare him with Sagan. The way Sagan taught seemed to me a “I’m not showing off” guy. This guy (Tyson) is trying so hard to show everyone he’s the top notch. It’s a matter of personalities, I guess.
@Nothgiel:
I completely agree. On YouTube clips I have watched, there is this underlying “vibe” of “… look how witty and entertaining I am”. My above mentioned experience at his two hour ‘… look how witty and entertaining I am”… show with no real, inspirational science to discuss was just horrid. I have never wanted a refund more in my life for something I paid for.
I liked his stuff 15 years ago that was ONLY about science. Now that he’s become a shill for the political left, I’m done with him. Being one of the cool kids is clearly a lot more important than science to him these days.
I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t give a rip about his political opinion and I care even less about his lectures and shows he hosts. He has become and arrogant tart. If you go out to YouTube and watch some scientific discussions with his colleagues, he prances around the stage dominating all the talk time, interrupting, trying to make stupid jokes that aren’t really funny or relevant to the discussion or science… his narcissism just spills out all over the stage and you can see his colleagues rolling their eyes, just begging that he would sit down and shut up and give the a fair chance to speak. He has just become so full of himself and because he isn’t a professional actor, it is really transparent.
I went to one of his events in Seattle and it was like $180 for two tickets and it had NO science in it. It was just a bunch of filler and again, him prancing around the stage bragging about his Cosmos contract with Fox and how he got deals to host shows. I paid almost $200 just to watch some guy talk about himself and think he was funny and clever on stage for two hours. What a waste of time.
I know Carl Sagan would not enjoy watching him.
@Jim+S: And the Cosmos series he did put me to sleep. That is NOT a joke or an exaggeration. It REALLY did. I tried to watch about three episodes and I fell asleep it was SO lacking of inspiration. It was sort of written for 6th graders. I don’t want an entire hour about how the Earth is round or how something things are really, really small and some things are really, really big with no discussion about real quantum physics or cosmology. .. and don’t even get me started on the “Johnny Quest” animations that were used as filler because he couldn’t give the producers enough good content to use. HE SUCKS and has become an arrogant, over priced boor.
A preening pompous putz. Liberals/progressives have sowed this nonsense and it is they will reap the reward. Paraphrasing LTG Honore: “Tyson is stuck on stupid.”