Bill Nye is an entertainer / educator. I’ve met plenty of people with PHDs and masters who couldn’t present a basic concept because they’re too caught up in technicalities and not understanding what it’s like to teach and get people interested in something.
I’ll happily take a minimally qualified Science Guy that inspires thousands or millions of people to get into science than the most sciency scientist in all science that only ever inspired people to punch people.
Furthermore, formal education is only one part of knowledge. Gatekeeping the word “scientist” is pointless. Maybe he has equivalent knowledge, skills, and ability to someone with a more advanced education. Maybe he doesn’t. Formal education is just the usual route, not the only route.
Is there some controversy around Bill Nye that I haven’t heard?
He has been a leading science communicator covering hundreds of topics for many decades, and is only human, of course there are going to be shortcomings.
I’ve also heard that he gets a lot of weird people who are overly attached to the idea of him getting their fantasies crushed when they meet him. Realize that a lot of those “I met him and he was rude” people might not be completely honest about their encounters. Think along the lines of Paris Syndrome, but for a person.
Definitely possible, it’s just a little too consistent for me to think it’s all people meeting their hero and nobody just trying to do their job and getting treated poorly.
I mean, I got the info about other people being weird around Bill Nye from a fan who went to one of his talks. According to her, lot of people who asked questions were asking him questions they were hyper specific to their chosen field that Nye would have no way of knowing unless that was the field he was working in. His specific field is education and science commutation. Without preparation, he’s only going to be able to answer in depth questions in that field.
Fwiw Nye does seem to be very chummy with Neil de Grasse Tyson, and that guy’s issues are far more well attested to. From the smug poor media literacy, to reports of being professionally hard to work with, to his sexual harrassment allegations. I’m not especially inclined to give Nye the benefit of the doubt given the company he chooses to keep.
I had to look up the sexual harassment stuff. That’s from 2019 and it was either cleared or never substantiated.
Even if Tyson is a bit of a lolcow on twitter, there are far worse things to be.
I’m just really suspicious of how popular it is to discredit science communicators while anti-intellectualism is so pervasive in society. It’s far easier to tear something down then it is to build something.
He’s more than just “a bit of a lolcow”. He discredits science by being an arsehole and inserting science into places it obviously does not belong. He’s the epitome of that stereotypical “STEM bro” that looks down upon the arts and humanities. Here’s one anecdote about him I found:
Just saw a clip of his on Instagram about whether “fahrenheit units are better for the weather” as opposed to Celsius.
He starts off with “well, the weather doesn’t care about how we measure it. It just is what it is, regardless of our units. What you mean is that fahrenheit makes it easy for us to understand the weather…” And then goes on to discuss it.
Like… Fuck off man. Everyone knows what the person meant, and he’s just being a smartass about it.
He’s also gone on “proving” that Santa can’t be real with real physics. That’s not stuff that makes people interested in science. It’s just dickish and does exactly the opposite.
Here’s an anecdote from someone who admits to overall liking him:
I still listen to [his podcast], but I’m gonna spoil it to you: just listen how often he interrupts people. Every question being asked he needs do change or add something and then “complains” that the section or question takes too long.
There’s also a clip with Joe Rogan where he’s not even listening but just rambles on, and keep interrupting.
And finally, I get annoyed by his words of wisdoms where he’s recycling the same sentences in his genius complex voice.
The claim there is that this is just one “side” of NDT and that his “real” side, when it’s allowed to show through, is a much better communicator of the wonder of science. My take is that we don’t get to see this “authentic” version of him nearly often enough to give him credit for it.
He has that bad habit that a lot of smart people (particularly physicists, for some reason) have, which is to think that because they’re smart in their one area, they must also be smart in others. He is certainly nowhere near as bad as some (looking at you, Sabine Hossenfelder), but he does have a nasty habit particularly when talking about the history of science (which, first and foremost, is history). One point that he’s particularly fond of (having repeated it regularly online as well as including it in his Cosmos remake) is the mediaeval flat earth myth.
As for the sexual misconduct allegations, they weren’t proven, but even if you take NDT entirely at his own word…it might not rise to the level of criminal misconduct, but it sure is creepy as fuck behaviour. Grabbing under someone’s dress straps? Inviting a subordinate home for a private meal?
But it’s not clear to me that we should just take him at his word. His own post defending himself, particularly the 1980s case, spends an awful lot of time attacking the character of the accuser. Whereas in the other cases he at least attempts to play it in the respectful “oh I can see how you might have gotten the wrong impression and I’m sorry” manner, here it’s just “no, you’re clearly my intellectual inferior and therefore why should anybody believe you?”
As for him being “cleared”:
According to Watson, the so-called “investigations” Tyson was referring to consisted of the following: “I had one 30-minute sit-down with a Fox HR representative and a 45 minute-hour sit-down with a man from a private company. I gave them both lengthy lists of extremely reliable people who could corroborate my story, text messages from that time, emails NDT had sent to me, etc. None of the people I gave contact info for were ever contacted by these companies.”
In his defence, I will say, I’ve seen a lot of people accusing him of also getting the physics wrong on certain things. And at least one case of him getting into a conversation with Richard Dawkins where he supposedly got something wrong about DNA. My read on most of the situations of this sort that I’ve seen are that they’re either minor errors that are naturally going to occur in off-the-cuff discussions, or stem from an imprecision of language where the actual point he is trying to convey was totally reasonable. Maybe, given he’s a science communicator, he should try better to get these things right, and be ready to correct them in the comments or in editing when they happen and are pointed out, which is something he seems not to do. But I don’t consider this a slight on him as a person at all. Not at the scale that I’ve seen.
I saw Tyson take such a dismissive attitude toward the threats of something like AI, specifically, AGI/ASI with the flippant “but we’d just shut it off!” kind of thing, it really grinded my gears.
However, I guess I’m falling into the same trap that so many do - expecting this guy to be all things to every aspect of anything that smacks of “science” and that’s just not a realistic expectation. I’ll stick with him on things like the re-make/update of Cosmos and ignore his random hot takes on virtually everything else. Probably also when he’s putting pen to paper vs. the hot take kind of thing on a talk show. He seems to be a frequent guest on talk shows and I remember a few being quite cringe at times.
I seem to remember a certain kind of person (usually your local WELLAXKTUALLY guy) getting butthurt about the way Sagan was being held up (in their view) as the arbiter of science or something, repeating “he’s not a real scientist he’s just a generalist” as a constant refrain.
Fuck it, who cares. If guys like this are good at getting whole generations of people interested in science, more power to them…science could use all the PR it can get in the age of Idiocracy.
If guys like this are good at getting whole generations of people interested in science, more power to them
That’s the problem here though. He might be good at getting a certain kind of STEM bro into science, but his smart attitude turns away heaps more. He contributes to the perception of science as being hostile to women, at the same time as reinforcing the perception of science as elitist and exclusionary. He might’ve fit in well in the '90s and '00s, but unfortunately he’s around in the '10s and '20s.
Pretty much this. Met him once. He’s has no scandals, he’s just kind of a rude guy.
I had a friend tell a story once about how he was on a field trip and the class found out Bill Nye was in the building. But once Bill found out kids were on the way he escaped out a window to avoid them. I’m not sure how true that is, but its kinda funny.
Having personally interacted with him more times than I would like, and it was only 3, he’s just a massive jerk, and a self assured belittler.
He doesn’t respect people. I’m not sure he respects anyone other than those that can make his image better, and then it’s conditional and stops when they aren’t useful.
On a more serious note: If anyone can just claim anything in a conversation, that would be detrimental to any discussion. Either everybody makes up their own “facts” because no-one bothers proving everyone else’s version of a story (which is just everybody lying in everybody’s face); or everybody is constantly fact-checking everyone else, which makes the conversation take much longer than necessary.
You already have the source, or at least an idea in which context you got the information and how to find it again. It’s just common courtesy to share it the others rather than making them do the work, too.
There is a time and topic for demanding rigorous discussion, and shit posting about Dolph Lundgren ain’t it. Insinuating dishonesty and demanding a source about something so unserious is like inserting yourself into a casual conversation to start an argument.
Eh, it’s more about the enthusiasm than the qualifications. Plus, while Bill Nye is no angel, at least he’s not a Putin supporter.
Bill Nye is an entertainer / educator. I’ve met plenty of people with PHDs and masters who couldn’t present a basic concept because they’re too caught up in technicalities and not understanding what it’s like to teach and get people interested in something.
I’ll happily take a minimally qualified Science Guy that inspires thousands or millions of people to get into science than the most sciency scientist in all science that only ever inspired people to punch people.
Furthermore, formal education is only one part of knowledge. Gatekeeping the word “scientist” is pointless. Maybe he has equivalent knowledge, skills, and ability to someone with a more advanced education. Maybe he doesn’t. Formal education is just the usual route, not the only route.
Is there some controversy around Bill Nye that I haven’t heard?
He has been a leading science communicator covering hundreds of topics for many decades, and is only human, of course there are going to be shortcomings.
He has a reputation of just being an unpleasant dick and difficult to work with. Nothing super problematic to my knowledge, just a bad personality.
I’ve also heard that he gets a lot of weird people who are overly attached to the idea of him getting their fantasies crushed when they meet him. Realize that a lot of those “I met him and he was rude” people might not be completely honest about their encounters. Think along the lines of Paris Syndrome, but for a person.
Hm, never heard of Paris Syndrome; guess you learn something every day, thanks.
Definitely possible, it’s just a little too consistent for me to think it’s all people meeting their hero and nobody just trying to do their job and getting treated poorly.
I mean, I got the info about other people being weird around Bill Nye from a fan who went to one of his talks. According to her, lot of people who asked questions were asking him questions they were hyper specific to their chosen field that Nye would have no way of knowing unless that was the field he was working in. His specific field is education and science commutation. Without preparation, he’s only going to be able to answer in depth questions in that field.
Fwiw Nye does seem to be very chummy with Neil de Grasse Tyson, and that guy’s issues are far more well attested to. From the smug poor media literacy, to reports of being professionally hard to work with, to his sexual harrassment allegations. I’m not especially inclined to give Nye the benefit of the doubt given the company he chooses to keep.
I had to look up the sexual harassment stuff. That’s from 2019 and it was either cleared or never substantiated.
Even if Tyson is a bit of a lolcow on twitter, there are far worse things to be.
I’m just really suspicious of how popular it is to discredit science communicators while anti-intellectualism is so pervasive in society. It’s far easier to tear something down then it is to build something.
I find it fascinating that they’re out for blood when it comes to Tyson and Nye, but they ignore the rapist in the whitehouse…
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He’s more than just “a bit of a lolcow”. He discredits science by being an arsehole and inserting science into places it obviously does not belong. He’s the epitome of that stereotypical “STEM bro” that looks down upon the arts and humanities. Here’s one anecdote about him I found:
He’s also gone on “proving” that Santa can’t be real with real physics. That’s not stuff that makes people interested in science. It’s just dickish and does exactly the opposite.
Here’s an anecdote from someone who admits to overall liking him:
The claim there is that this is just one “side” of NDT and that his “real” side, when it’s allowed to show through, is a much better communicator of the wonder of science. My take is that we don’t get to see this “authentic” version of him nearly often enough to give him credit for it.
He has that bad habit that a lot of smart people (particularly physicists, for some reason) have, which is to think that because they’re smart in their one area, they must also be smart in others. He is certainly nowhere near as bad as some (looking at you, Sabine Hossenfelder), but he does have a nasty habit particularly when talking about the history of science (which, first and foremost, is history). One point that he’s particularly fond of (having repeated it regularly online as well as including it in his Cosmos remake) is the mediaeval flat earth myth.
As for the sexual misconduct allegations, they weren’t proven, but even if you take NDT entirely at his own word…it might not rise to the level of criminal misconduct, but it sure is creepy as fuck behaviour. Grabbing under someone’s dress straps? Inviting a subordinate home for a private meal?
But it’s not clear to me that we should just take him at his word. His own post defending himself, particularly the 1980s case, spends an awful lot of time attacking the character of the accuser. Whereas in the other cases he at least attempts to play it in the respectful “oh I can see how you might have gotten the wrong impression and I’m sorry” manner, here it’s just “no, you’re clearly my intellectual inferior and therefore why should anybody believe you?”
As for him being “cleared”:
In his defence, I will say, I’ve seen a lot of people accusing him of also getting the physics wrong on certain things. And at least one case of him getting into a conversation with Richard Dawkins where he supposedly got something wrong about DNA. My read on most of the situations of this sort that I’ve seen are that they’re either minor errors that are naturally going to occur in off-the-cuff discussions, or stem from an imprecision of language where the actual point he is trying to convey was totally reasonable. Maybe, given he’s a science communicator, he should try better to get these things right, and be ready to correct them in the comments or in editing when they happen and are pointed out, which is something he seems not to do. But I don’t consider this a slight on him as a person at all. Not at the scale that I’ve seen.
I saw Tyson take such a dismissive attitude toward the threats of something like AI, specifically, AGI/ASI with the flippant “but we’d just shut it off!” kind of thing, it really grinded my gears.
However, I guess I’m falling into the same trap that so many do - expecting this guy to be all things to every aspect of anything that smacks of “science” and that’s just not a realistic expectation. I’ll stick with him on things like the re-make/update of Cosmos and ignore his random hot takes on virtually everything else. Probably also when he’s putting pen to paper vs. the hot take kind of thing on a talk show. He seems to be a frequent guest on talk shows and I remember a few being quite cringe at times.
I seem to remember a certain kind of person (usually your local WELLAXKTUALLY guy) getting butthurt about the way Sagan was being held up (in their view) as the arbiter of science or something, repeating “he’s not a real scientist he’s just a generalist” as a constant refrain.
Fuck it, who cares. If guys like this are good at getting whole generations of people interested in science, more power to them…science could use all the PR it can get in the age of Idiocracy.
That’s the problem here though. He might be good at getting a certain kind of STEM bro into science, but his smart attitude turns away heaps more. He contributes to the perception of science as being hostile to women, at the same time as reinforcing the perception of science as elitist and exclusionary. He might’ve fit in well in the '90s and '00s, but unfortunately he’s around in the '10s and '20s.
Pretty much this. Met him once. He’s has no scandals, he’s just kind of a rude guy.
I had a friend tell a story once about how he was on a field trip and the class found out Bill Nye was in the building. But once Bill found out kids were on the way he escaped out a window to avoid them. I’m not sure how true that is, but its kinda funny.
Having personally interacted with him more times than I would like, and it was only 3, he’s just a massive jerk, and a self assured belittler.
He doesn’t respect people. I’m not sure he respects anyone other than those that can make his image better, and then it’s conditional and stops when they aren’t useful.
That’s disappointing.
His AMA was pretty bad.
How so?
It’s been a while and I don’t feel like going back there to refresh my memory.
Source or GTFO. Spreading rumours about people is a shitty thing to do.
I’ll be nice, but nobody owes it to you to source everything they say or look things up for you. Googling isn’t hard.
Nobody owes it to you to believe what you say either, but they offered you the chance to back up your words.
Granted they weren’t nice about it, but shit for shit leaves everyone covered in shit.
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Onlyfans already knew.
On a more serious note: If anyone can just claim anything in a conversation, that would be detrimental to any discussion. Either everybody makes up their own “facts” because no-one bothers proving everyone else’s version of a story (which is just everybody lying in everybody’s face); or everybody is constantly fact-checking everyone else, which makes the conversation take much longer than necessary.
You already have the source, or at least an idea in which context you got the information and how to find it again. It’s just common courtesy to share it the others rather than making them do the work, too.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)
There is a time and topic for demanding rigorous discussion, and shit posting about Dolph Lundgren ain’t it. Insinuating dishonesty and demanding a source about something so unserious is like inserting yourself into a casual conversation to start an argument.
There was a clickbait NY Post article that I’d never link to, this article (archive) is more even handed.
This is confirmed by a search that’s faster than your comment so where’s your anger coming from?