A Scientist’s Unethical Quote Fabrication

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Neil deGrasse Tyson is supposedly a scientist of such renown that the Fox network decided to build the new Cosmos TV series around him. Fox was repaid — deservedly — by really bad ratings. The programs not only were boring but also revealed one factual misstatement after another.

Tyson turns out to be a political propagandist for a particular secular agenda, not an objective observer of science. Similarly, Tyson now has been called out by The Federalist for serial fabrications of quotations on George W. Bush. David Klinghoffer noted this yesterday. In a breathtaking takedown, Sean Davis reviews some of Tyson’s past inventions, and then focuses on a particularly obnoxious and sophomoric attack on Bush’s supposed ideas on the stars. If President Bush could be faulted on science issues, it is not, as Tyson claims, for being ignorant and destructive, but for the misjudgment of naming Tyson to a presidential science committee. How did someone as shoddy as Tyson slip by?

We have rules against plagiarism and similar misconduct by scientists and scholars, don’t we? Well, how about a little peer pressure on a scientist who misuses his credentials to radically misrepresent a public figure’s statements on scientific matters? You cannot read the Federalist piece without realizing (if you didn’t already know) how badly Tyson — cheered on the by establishment — distorts facts on one thing after another in order to serve a false and tendentious narrative.

Image source: Wikipedia.

Bruce Chapman

Cofounder and Chairman of the Board of Discovery Institute
Bruce Chapman has had a long career in American politics and public policy at the city, state, national, and international levels. Elected to the Seattle City Council and as Washington State's Secretary of State, he also served in several leadership posts in the Reagan administration, including ambassador. In 1991, he founded the public policy think tank Discovery Institute, where he currently serves as Chairman of the Board and director of the Chapman Center on Citizen Leadership.

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