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populism - support for the concerns of ordinary people No and I don't think science is elitist either. Neil deGrasse Tyson said "The good thing about science i

• icelancer 9y ago
  >>Neil deGrasse Tyson said "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." Like a lot of things NdGT says, this is ridiculous. Science is not "true" for any value of "true" that makes sense. It is a process, the results of which may or may not accurately describe truth as we know it today. NdGT thinks he is making science cool with his pithy quotes and his one-liners on Twitter showing how smart he is, but I fear he is doing long-term damage on how difficult science really is, and what the sausage factory really looks like behind the curtain. (Source: Am a scientist with published papers who can't stand the industry sometimes)
  • Diederich 9y ago
    > I fear he is doing long-term damage on how difficult science really is Just to be clear, if I may ask: do you believe NdGT is causing people to believe that science isn't difficult?
    • DonbunEf7 9y ago
      Another, different, scientist. No, but I think that he makes people believe that science is more definitive, unbiased, magically an accurate reflection of reality (that is, "true" or "real" or "correct"), and agreed-upon than it really is. I also worry that because his fields, which are relatively "hard sciences", are not being hit very hard by the replication crisis, that he is callous to the danger that the "soft sciences"' collective failure has done to science's mainstream image.
  • conanbatt 9y ago
    Thank you. I also cringe at that quote, because its actually completely unscientific.