Posted on December 21, 2015

Scientists Who Are Actually Really Stupid: #1, Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart, December 21, 2015

Neil deGrasse Tyson made the decision a long time ago to be a sort of media cheerleader for science instead of an actual scientist, and although he isn’t a great communicator, it was the right decision because he was unlikely ever to trouble the Nobel committee. Also, he is stupid and his politics are dumb.

Tyson, whom liberals love because they are racists who can’t believe a black guy could be smart enough to be a scientist and so spontaneously ejaculate and soil themselves every time they see him on TV, hasn’t published anything of note for years. The advantage of being a celebrity scientist is that you don’t actually have to do any science. You’re exempted from the usual “publish or perish” rules.

Even when he was making a go of being a proper academic, Tyson didn’t exactly have the most glittering record. He didn’t get the PhD he was studying for at the University of Texas and had to go elsewhere for his qualification. Obviously, rather than take responsibility for his academic performance, Tyson has blamed racism. In reality, Tyson was playing in bands and appearing on stage instead of completing essays. Typical science PhD students are at any given time either studying, teaching or sleeping.

It’s tough to avoid the conclusion that much of what is frustrating about Neil deGrasse Tyson stems from identity politics and the victimhood ideology peddled by leftist academics and journalists. Despite all his media success, Tyson insists that racism is responsible for his academic failures, alluding to sinister “forces” that keep women and ethnic minorities down.

In 2005, he said: “I know these forces are real and I had to survive them in order to get where I am today. So before we start talking about genetic differences, you gotta come up with a system where there’s equal opportunity.” He of course doesn’t address the fact that the only reason Neil deGrasse Tyson is on television at all, given his intellectual shortcomings, is that he is black.

Perhaps realising how ridiculous he sounds, the world’s most celebrated populariser of science has stopped talking about race in interviews and says he has never given an interview whose primary focus is race since 1993. Which is something, at least.

Social justice-inspired grievance culture has flavoured much of Tyson’s output during his media career. Indeed, some observers say he’s more left-wing propagandist than rigorous thinker these days. {snip}

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Neil deGrasse Tyson is a philistine with no love of learning except for popularisations and oversimplifications that serve his political purposes. Just look what happens when he’s asked about the study of philosophy: “I don’t have time for that.” Asking too many questions, he says, “can really mess you up.” For someone who so obviously wants to be laureate–and who is said to be lobbying hard for this behind the scenes–his attitude is unprecedented and his mystifyingly proud, deliberate ignorance an affront to science.

For all his pontificating about climate change and the evils of guns, Tyson seems unable to grasp some basic ethical realities: for instance, that science without ethics or philosophy is likely to produce weapons and all manner of stomach-churning experiments in cloning and on babies, stem cells and animals. It’s not like we haven’t seen that happen in history. Tyson actively ridicules those who ask us to consider the moral implications of our actions.

And does all this with unearned and undeserved vanity and an intergalactic ego. He once even said: “Scientists are smart and doctors are stupid.” Tyson constantly situates himself in the big brain league, but he has done nothing in his life to demonstrate that he belongs there–and a lot to suggest he doesn’t. Not for Neil deGrasse Tyson the lowly, humble, intellectually curious aspect of the humble lab researcher.

And then there are the exaggerated claims. Tyson claims to have been “mentored” by Carl Sagan, for instance. Yet it appears this “mentorship” boils down to little more than a couple of traded letters. {snip}

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