What Do You Think of Prohibition, Professor? - Einstein Showing Scientists How It Should Be Done

"I don't drink, so it's all the same to me."

One of the most ridiculous icons of pop-science, Bill Nye, has disgraced himself by lending his TV created persona as the "science guy" to the Trump administration, probably the most anti-science president in our history and scientists are finally waking up to the fact that the guy is a celebrity douchebag.

Tonight, Bill Nye “The Science Guy” will accompany Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), Trump’s nominee for NASA Administrator, to the State of the Union address. Nye has said that he’s accompanying the Congressman to help promote space exploration, since, he asserts, “NASA is the best brand the United States has” and that his attendance “should not be … seen as an acceptance of the recent attacks on science and the scientific community.”

But by attending the SOTU as Rep. Bridenstine’s guest, Nye has tacitly endorsed those very policies, and put his own personal brand over the interests of the scientific community at large. Rep. Bridenstine is a controversial nominee who refuses to state that climate change is driven by human activity, and even introduced legislation to remove Earth sciences from NASA’s scientific mission. Further, he’s worked to undermine civil rights, including pushing for crackdowns on immigrants, a ban on gay marriage, and abolishing the Department of Education.

As scientists, we cannot stand by while Nye lends our community’s credibility to a man who would undermine the United States’ most prominent science agency. And we cannot stand by while Nye uses his public persona as a science entertainer to support an administration that is expressly xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, ableist, and anti-science.

Which leads me to point out, though there are many real, as opposed to TV show, scientists who laudably reject those things, their presence in science is hardly a secret, especially that last list, you can say the same thing about many Nobel laureates and some of the foremost figures in the history of science, I've certainly documented that within biology and among scientists from non-biology disciplines when they tip toe into biology, such as the infamous scientific racist and post-war eugenicist William Shockley.

That the 500 Women Scientists who published their criticism of Billy Nye in Scientific American want to get that stuff out of science is laudable, but you can't do it without coming to a basic criticism of the Darwinian dogma that rules biology and which is borrowed by such pseudo-sciences as psychology, sociology, anthropology and ethology.  As I have pointed out, as recently as a few days ago, all of that list of bigotry and a scientific support of it in social, legal and political policy and practice will persist until natural selection is ousted from its position as required ideology in science.

I sympathize, entirely, with the contents of the letter and the scientists who wrote or endorsed it.  But Bill Nye has used the neo-atheist fad to keep himself a public figure popular, especially, with young people who were kiddies when his show was on TV.   As they acknowledge, he's not ready for serious, adult, prime time as a representative of real, serious, even species and planet saving science.

The true shame is that Bill Nye remains the popular face of science because he keeps himself in the public eye. To be sure, increasing the visibility of scientists in the popular media is important to strengthening public support for science, but Nye’s TV persona has perpetuated the harmful stereotype that scientists are nerdy, combative white men in lab coats—a stereotype that does not comport with our lived experience as women in STEM. And he continues to wield his power recklessly, even after his recent endeavors in debate and politics have backfired spectacularly.

But Bill Nye is hardly the only one you can say that about, to an extent it's endemic with celebrity scientists who use their credentials to assert various retrogressive ideologies spreading unneeded, counter-productive, harmful and entirely unnecessary baggage on the public understanding of science.  Carl Sagan was one of his teachers as he was of Neil Degrasse Tyson, none of them is free of the sin of overextending the legitimate range of their expertise to give celebrity pontifications into things they know little about, especially when they talk about things like history and philosophy.  It should be considered a scandal that an evangelical philosopher and theologian,  William Lane Craig, regularly demonstrates far more responsibility and discipline than the celebrity atheist-scientists in not speaking past his competence and in bothering to master the essential points of scientific arguments in debates with them.

I remember the first few times I heard Carl Sagan talking within his specialty, the physics of planets and being fascinated by him.  But, then I heard him going into biology (his invented field "exobiology" especially), and, worse, history and philosophy and a cartoon version of theology and that spell was shattered.

Celebrity scientists who talk outside of their competence are no more likely to know what they're talking about or to have an important opinion of than anyone else, sometimes their erudition is based on the rankest of popular and ideological lore, sometimes it's not that far removed from the tabloid-cabloid level of things. Some are a lot more careful, some are even, sometimes, responsible and admitting to not knowing anything. 

And what the hell is it with letting that Nye twerp get away with playing a scientist on TV?    Despite Cornell taking advantage of his Saturday morning kiddie show celebrity to let him teach a few intro-level science classes, the guy doesn't even have the credentials, nevermind the publications history to be a scientist.   I know he impresses blog-rat atheists and sci-rangers but the guy doesn't have the cred to represent science.  Look at his stupidity in lending his fame to Trump's anti-science disaster.

Scientists should really reject this stuff, it costs them a lot more than it buys them.  And I didn't even mention sci-guys like Dawkins, Krauss, etc.