Posted on 09/29/2014 7:40:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Popular scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson responded publicly to an email sent by Sean Davis of The Federalist. You can read it in its entirety on Facebook.
To quickly review the situation thats been unfolding in recent weeks, Sean found significant problems in various claims that Tyson makes as part of his public presentations on science. A newspaper headline touted for years by Tyson likely doesnt exist. The exact quote he uses to bash members of Congress as being stupid also doesnt exist. The details within one of Tysons favorite anecdotes a story of how he bravely confronted a judge about his mathematical illiteracy while serving on jury duty seem to change with various tellings.
And perhaps most oddly, given how easy it is to check out, Tyson frequently shared a quote that he attributed to President George W. Bush despite no record of this quote existing elsewhere.
According to Tyson, in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush uttered the phrase, Our God is the God who named the stars. According to Tyson, the president made that claim as a way of segregating radical Islam from religions like Christianity or Judaism. You can watch it here.
OK, so Tyson responded and while it seems to be going over well with many of his devoted fanboys inside and particularly outside the media (seriously, dont read the comments to the Facebook post if you want to have good feelings about your fellow man), its the most bizarre statement ever.
For the unverifiable newspaper headline about half the schools in the district being below average, he says he is completely unable to provide verifiable substantiation for it ever having existed in reality. And yet he doesnt say hes made it up. He says its drawn from a second-tier headline he saw in the New York Post in the early-to-mid-1990s. So if its there, Im sure well find it in no time.
For the unverifiable quote of a Member of Congress saying Ive changed my views 360 degrees on that issue he is unable to respond to Seans request for the name of the member of Congress who said it, his or her exact quote, when it was said, where it was said, the name of the publication that recorded and published the quote or the date of said publication.
Thats because he says this: Ive actually heard this quote several times in my life, but only once (in person) with a member of Congress. Again, as with the NYPost, names dont matter here.
Oh dear. Lets move on to the Bush quote, which is where things get really bad. To Seans request that Tyson verify the quote hes been using against the former president, Tyson notes that September 11th affected him deeply and adds:
I have explicit memory of those words being spoken by the President. I reacted on the spot, making note for possible later reference in my public discourse. Odd that nobody seems to be able to find the quote anywhere -- surely every word publicly uttered by a President gets logged.
It is odd. Very odd. As is this response. So the basis of his claim for this Bush quote is his own personal notes. But he cant help any of the rest of us with any of this? What about how drastically this public-quote-heard-only-by-Tyson conflicts with all the public statements of Bush?
No matter. Take this bizarre collection of words:
FYI: There are two kinds of failures of memory. One is remembering that which has never happened and the other is forgetting that which did. In my case, from life experience, Im vastly more likely to forget an incident than to remember an incident that never happened. So I assure you, the quote is there somewhere. When you find it, tell me. Then I can offer it to others who have taken as much time as you to explore these things.
Wait, hes more likely to forget something than remember something that didnt happen. And because of this self-reported likelihood, he can assure us that the quote is somewhere? In addition to Seans efforts to verify the quote which include speaking with all of Bushs major speechwriters Tysons fanboys have been desperately trying to find any evidence of same.
Brandt @UrbanAchievr
Redditors scoured every inch of MH17 crash zone & every
face in Boston marathon crowd. If @neiltyson's Bush
quote was real, they'd find it.
10:16 AM - 27 Sep 2014 Manhattan, NY, United States
28 Retweets 7 favorites
But what about the end where he suggests that the problem with everyones inability to verify his claims about reality lies outside himself. Note that he subtly suggests Sean has the problem for spending time trying to verify what Tyson has spoken. Or that the onus is on Sean to verify something instead of the person making the claim.
Word to the wise: When rational people strongly suspect youve made something up to make yourself look better and to make one of the most recorded people in human history look bad and theres no evidence of your claim, the onus is actually on you to clear your name. Dont get me wrong, Sean Davis is a thorough guy. I mean, the very first few claims of yours he looked into he was able to show serious problems with. I know hes sat on a bunch of other problems people have pointed out to him as well so you probably dont want him looking any further into anything youve written. Your saving grace right now is that the media rather than looking into your various claims is instead writing stories with headlines like this one from The Daily Beast: The Rights War on Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Cosmos host is widely despised by conservatives. Do they have a point, or are their complaints just anti-intellectualism run amok? Thats a real headline. Check it out for yourself (you dont have to just trust me that I saw it at some point!).
Not all journalists operate this way. To show you the range of opinion from journalists who do believe quotes should be verified and those who think the problem is with people who think quotes should be verified, I offer these two sample Tweets:
Andrew Kaczynski ✔ @BuzzFeedAndrew
Just admit you either misremembered or made up a Bush
quote @neiltyson. This denial flys in face of scientific
method http://facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/email-exchange-with-the-federalist/10152354422065869/
11:09 AM - 27 Sep 2014
141 Retweets 72 favorites
vs.
Jeff Spross @jeffspross
The "get Neil deGrasse Tyson" campaign is fascinating
from a fratboys vs geeks anthropological perspective.
https://m.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/email-exchange-with-the-federalist/10152354422065869/
10:35 AM - 27 Sep 2014
4 Retweets 3 favorites
You can kind of judge how much to trust various media by whether they defend quote fabrication and think fact claims should be verifiable to non-Gnostics or try to go after people who are worried about the quote fabrication. Weve seen more of the latter than is in any way journalistically defensible, particularly at this stage of the story.
Or as Sean notes:
Sean Davis @seanmdav
This, from @neiltyson, is the adult equivalent of swearing
that you totally did see a leprechaun riding a unicorn.
https://m.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/email-exchange-with-the-federalist/10152354422065869/
10:12 AM - 27 Sep 2014
59 Retweets 26 favorites
Tysons non-defense goes on to discuss why he has used different numbers to describe the amount of cocaine a defendant was accused of having in a jury trial he was kicked off of. In this case his defense is his strongest which is to say the numbers dont match because hes not as precise in public speaking as he is in print. Precision is truly a challenge for public speakers and this is the least problematic of Seans charges, in my view.
What is bizarre in his explanation of how he has been imprecise in this story is that he tells Sean that if he could talk to others in the courtroom, Perhaps one of them will remember and come forward for you, serving as an eyewitness. But the underlying fact here is that I am probably a better eyewitness than any of them because the incident involved me.
Eyewitnesses are a good thing. And if you believe Neil deGrasse Tyson is your lord and savior, his eyewitness testimony is of course sufficient for verifying, for instance, that George W. Bush quote.
But what about those of us who are not in the Tyson faith-based community? Are we anti-intellectuals to not trust in his unverified claims? I suppose that will be the continued approach by many in the media, some folks in the Wikipedia community (whose trust in Tyson puts the most devout religious piety to absolute shame), and the other fanboys.
He notes and fully concedes the problems with eyewitness testimony and the fact that its basically all he offered.
Me telling you I said it. I saw it. I read It. I heard it. So I admire your skepticism. We all share this in the scientific community. The difference is that our urge to run and verify a statement is proportional to how extraordinary the claim is. If my colleague tells me it was cloudy at the telescope last night, Im not compelled to mount an investigation of its truth. But if my colleague declared that an alien saucer flew over the observatory last night, my need for evidence beyond his eyewitness account increases greatly.
First this:
Michael B Dougherty @michaelbd
I like how he pretends his fanboys are we in the scientific
community https://m.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/email-exchange-with-the-federalist/10152354422065869/
10:13 AM - 27 Sep 2014
16 Retweets 9 favorites
I know from much of our reader correspondence on this issue that those actually in the scientific community arent willing to go down on this anti-scientific boat Tysons in right now. In fact, they sent us other examples of him getting science wrong. Yes, in the medias eyes, Tyson is the high priest of science. In some fanboy communities on the internet, the same. But lets not confuse actual science with making up quotes nobody can verify to make a point about how stars were named.
But the thing is that the newspaper headline, the member of Congress quote and especially the quote-that-contradicts-everything-we-know-of-Bush-on-interfaith-relations are outlandish claims. Thats why he uses them in his speeches. They look simply like examples but they sound bizarre memorable and outlandish, even. They call into question journalism, politics, and George W. Bush which is why they were able to be used for so long. Who does not love making fun of our presidents, our media or our other politicians?
In any case, Im glad that Tyson has acknowledged that there is no evidence beyond the testimony of one suddenly questionable eyewitness for the claims hes repeatedly and publicly made over the years.
I couldnt be more disappointed at his continued defensiveness and excuse-making. And the media should know that Seans initial even casual look into just a few claims made by Tyson is not exhaustive by a long shot. They happened to simply be the first few things he looked into. If they dont dig further and instead dig in, thats telling as well.
Bullshit, it’s not an exact science, but Tyson vows to practice it until he gets it perfected, trust him!
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: The Affirmative Action Carl Sagan.
This guy claims to be a “scientist”??
To paraphrase “Liberals know so many things that aren’t true” Ronald Reagan
“There are two kinds of failures of memory. One is remembering that which has never happened and the other is forgetting that which did.”
What if you forget remembering something which has never happened? Which kind is that?
I had demoted him to a, “minor scientist” long ago. I’m sure there is consensus building on this, regardless of his orbit.
I’ll go with political hack.
I love that he uses a perfectly valid non-existent headline to ridicule journalists (as if you need to fabricate things to do so). I think I knew the difference between mean and median in 4th grade. Reminds me of a saying... “There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can count and those that can’t.”
On the bright side, at least I’ve got a good graphic for use when speaking to scientists-to-be about the dangers of “settled science.”
He’s a leftie, and he makes up things. That ain’t new. It’s kind of the whole deal about “global warming”, which had to be changed to “climate change” because nobody was buying the lie.
There are 10 kind of people in the world. Those that know binary, and those that don’t.
Neil is an arrogant jerk who thinks his education put him on a mantle of godliness. He never misses a chance to bash religion and worships the global warming cult. He is the Barry Obama of science.
A Democrat who is a lying blowhard.....who’d a thought!!!
Sort of like what happened to Pluto.
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