If you haven’t yet heard about the small but significant scandal concerning Neil Degrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist and host of the TV series “Cosmos,” who frequently speaks to audiences about cosmology, climate-change (as they’re calling it this week), and the shocking state of science literacy in America, you will be excused.
The scandal has not been covered by any mainstream media outlets — or, at any rate, not until recently, when the New York Times ran a weak-sauce Op-Ed about it, in which the writers, professors Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, managed to miss the point entirely.
Chabris and Simons seem to think the thrust of the scandal — which they do not regard as a scandal but rather a minor memory slip — was Tyson’s repeated fabrications of a George W. Bush quote.
The New York Times also, incidentally, forgot to credit the person and the publication who broke this scandal: one Sean Davis, whom I’ve referenced here once before.
In fact, however, the fabricated George W. Bush quote was the very least of Tyson’s mendacity.
Neil Degrasse Tyson was also caught fabricating a headline that was never actually a headline.
Neil Degrasse Tyson was also caught fabricating a quote by a member of congress who, in Tyson’s phony words, had changed his mind on a certain issue.
Neil Degrasse Tyson has been repeatedly caught changing his bizarre jury-duty story.
And then, of course, there’s all the pseudo-apologies, which make no sense to me and which indict him every bit as much as his prevarications.
So. If you don’t like to see science being corrupted by partisan politics and the Religion of the Left, do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with every bit of this scandal.