I was going to say this was remarkably logical and apolitical coming from Neil deGrasse Tyson but if he has recanted instead of allowing the facts to speak for himself he is not any different than I thought. Bill Nye probably told him shush.
I’m not familiar with this Tyson fellow, but we lose, on average, 28 people per day in the US to DUI-related car crashes. A mass shooting every day due to alcohol. Nobody is calling Anheuser-Busch and their lobbyists terrorist organizations or calling for a ban on alcohol.
Guess those 28 people are somehow worth less than the ones killed in a mass shooting.
Don't you know that feelings now trump facts?I don’t know why anyone with facts would recant!!!!
And now he's being attacked and accused
I was going to say this was remarkably logical and apolitical coming from Neil deGrasse Tyson but if he has recanted instead of allowing the facts to speak for himself he is not any different than I thought. Bill Nye probably told him shush.
Tyson has far more professional accolades than Bill Nye. Nye has a BS in mechanical engineering. Tyson has a Masters and PhD. Nye is a scientist like Dr. Phil is a psychologist. (Both aren't)
Yet Nye is far more accomplished at achieving actual science! Don't let his letters fool you, he's a genuine scientist! No need to tear him down to build up NDT.
In this instance Tyson was factually correct but socially clueless. You don't walk up to a mourner at a funeral and point out that the deceased actually lived 4.1 years beyond his expected life span! Telling the family of those killed by a mass murderer that people also die in car wrecks is bizarre and unhelpful, even if it's correct.
I am not sure that he actually recanted. His response was repeated on Vox.com as shown below. He seems to be apologizing only for not knowing in advance how some would respond to his first tweet.
“My intent was to offer objectively true information that might help shape conversations and reactions to preventable ways we die,” Tyson wrote in a statement posted on Facebook on Monday. “Where I miscalculated was that I genuinely believed the tweet would be helpful to anyone trying to save lives in America. What I learned from the range of reactions is that for many people, some information — my tweet in particular — can be true but unhelpful, especially at a time when many people are either still in shock, or trying to heal — or both.
“So if you are one of those people, I apologize for not knowing in advance what effect my tweet could have on you. I am therefore thankful for the candor and depth of critical reactions shared in my Twitter feed,” he said.
Recanting was smart simply for the sake of his own personal safety. JMO.
Beyond this and Tyson though, I think there's a teachable moment here regarding how we talk to the uninitiated. Trust me, non-gun people, even neutral types, really don't want to hear a litany of statistics or legalese when it comes to the topic. I find it better to just let others say what they feel and maybe, depending on situation, correct something simple that can be expressed without getting all pedantic and technical to them. Generally though, I don't talk about guns in real life.
Yet Nye is far more accomplished at achieving actual science! Don't let his letters fool you, he's a genuine scientist! No need to tear him down to build up NDT.
In this instance Tyson was factually correct but socially clueless. You don't walk up to a mourner at a funeral and point out that the deceased actually lived 4.1 years beyond his expected life span! Telling the family of those killed by a mass murderer that people also die in car wrecks is bizarre and unhelpful, even if it's correct.
We are going to fundamentally disagree on that point.
It wasn't at a funeral. It is Twitter. He didn't shove the stats in anyone's face. There are block, mute, and unfollow buttons if he was that "offensive" to those suffering from tiny heart syndrome.
These two posts made me think of some sort of off kilter Vulcan. They've rejected any spiritual values as a moral compass but on the other hand, they reject science in favor of social acceptance. For many, the acceptance occurs online rather than direct face-to-face interactions.
I get the feeling that many of the people who should have hit the "block" button would rather hide in the anonymity of the internet rather than truly self advocate. They would rather shout their opponent down than engage in a meaningful discussion regarding what offended them.
I’m not familiar with this Tyson fellow,
Yet Nye is far more accomplished at achieving actual science! Don't let his letters fool you, he's a genuine scientist! No need to tear him down to build up NDT.
In this instance Tyson was factually correct but socially clueless. You don't walk up to a mourner at a funeral and point out that the deceased actually lived 4.1 years beyond his expected life span! Telling the family of those killed by a mass murderer that people also die in car wrecks is bizarre and unhelpful, even if it's correct.
William Sanford Nye[3] (born November 27, 1955), popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science communicator, television presenter, and mechanical engineer. He is best known as the host of the PBS and syndicated children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998), the Netflix show Bill Nye Saves the World (2017–present), and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator.
Nye began his career as a mechanical engineer for Boeing Corporation in Seattle, where he invented a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube used on 747 airplanes. In 1986, Nye left Boeing to pursue comedy, writing and performing jokes and bits for the local sketch television show Almost Live!, where he would regularly conduct wacky science experiments. Nye aspired to become the next Mr. Wizard and with the help of several producers successfully pitched the children's television program Bill Nye the Science Guy to KCTS-TV, channel 9, Seattle's public television station.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (/dəˈɡræs/; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.
Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000.
From 1995 to 2005, Tyson wrote monthly essays in the "Universe" column for Natural History magazine, some of which were later published in his books Death by Black Hole (2007) and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017). During the same period, he wrote a monthly column in StarDate magazine, answering questions about the universe under the pen name "Merlin". Material from the column appeared in his books Merlin's Tour of the Universe (1998) and Just Visiting This Planet (1998). Tyson served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year. From 2006 to 2011, he hosted the television show NOVA ScienceNow on PBS. Since 2009, Tyson has hosted the weekly podcast StarTalk. A spin-off, also called StarTalk, began airing on National Geographic in 2015. In 2014, he hosted the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.[1] The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his "extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science".[2]