{"id":3354,"date":"2014-12-03T17:17:04","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T00:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/?p=3354"},"modified":"2014-12-04T15:00:19","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T22:00:19","slug":"neil-degrasse-tyson-not-off-the-hook-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/2014\/12\/neil-degrasse-tyson-not-off-the-hook-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Degrasse Tyson: Not Off the Hook Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-03-at-4.31.27-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3355\" src=\"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-03-at-4.31.27-PM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-12-03 at 4.31.27 PM\" width=\"534\" height=\"404\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-03-at-4.31.27-PM.png 534w, http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-03-at-4.31.27-PM-300x226.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 534px) 100vw, 534px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t yet heard about the small but significant scandal concerning Neil Degrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist and host of the TV series \u201cCosmos,\u201d who frequently speaks to audiences about cosmology, climate-change (as they&#8217;re calling it this week), and the shocking state of science literacy in America, you will be excused.<\/p>\n<p>The scandal has not been covered by any mainstream media outlets &#8212; or, at any rate, not until recently, when the <em>New York Times<\/em> ran a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/12\/02\/opinion\/why-our-memory-fails-us.html\">weak-sauce Op-Ed<\/a> about it, in which the writers, professors Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, managed to miss the point entirely.<\/p>\n<p>Chabris and Simons seem to think the thrust of the scandal &#8212; which they do not regard as a scandal but rather a minor memory slip &#8212; was Tyson&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/09\/16\/another-day-another-quote-fabricated-by-neil-degrasse-tyson\/\">repeated fabrications<\/a> of a George W. Bush quote.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>New York Times<\/em> also, incidentally, forgot to credit the person and the <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\">publication<\/a> who broke this scandal: one <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/author\/seandavis\/\">Sean Davis<\/a>, whom I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/2014\/03\/how-minimum-wage-laws-fly-in-the-face-of-the-irrefutable-law-of-supply-and-demand\/\">referenced here<\/a> once before.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, however, the fabricated George W. Bush quote was the very <em>least<\/em> of Tyson&#8217;s mendacity.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Degrasse Tyson was also caught <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/09\/10\/super-scientist-neil-degrasse-tyson-doesnt-understand-statistics\/\">fabricating a headline<\/a> that was never actually a headline.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Degrasse Tyson was also caught <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/09\/10\/super-scientist-neil-degrasse-tyson-doesnt-understand-statistics\/\">fabricating a quote<\/a> by a member of congress who, in Tyson&#8217;s phony words, had changed his mind on a certain issue.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Degrasse Tyson has been repeatedly caught changing his <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/09\/15\/did-neil-degrasse-tyson-just-try-to-justify-blatant-quote-fabrication\/\">bizarre jury-duty story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And then, of course, there&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/09\/27\/neil-degrasse-tyson-just-trust-me-on-those-things-i-said-ok\/\">all<\/a> the <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/10\/02\/neil-tysons-final-words-on-his-quote-fabrications-my-bad\/\">pseudo-apologies<\/a>, which make no sense to me and which indict him every bit as much as his prevarications.<\/p>\n<p>So. If you don&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t yet heard about the small but significant scandal concerning Neil Degrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist and host of the TV series \u201cCosmos,\u201d who frequently speaks to audiences about cosmology, climate-change (as they&#8217;re calling it this week), and the shocking state of science literacy in America, you will be excused. The scandal has not &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/2014\/12\/neil-degrasse-tyson-not-off-the-hook-yet\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Neil Degrasse Tyson: Not Off the Hook Yet&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2498],"tags":[2499,2500,2502,272,2665,2501,2368,1664],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}