And Wikipedia insists on covering it up.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/18/why-...brication/

Quote:Neil Tyson, a prominent popularizer of science (he even has his own television show) was recently found to have repeatedly fabricated multiple quotes over several years. The fabrications were not a one-off thing. They were deliberate and calculated, crafted with one goal in mind: to elevate Tyson, and by extension his audience, at the expense of know-nothing, knuckle-dragging nutjobs who hate science. Tyson targeted journalists, members of Congress, even former President George W. Bush. And what was their crime? They were guilty of rejecting science, according to Tyson.


There’s only one problem. None of the straw man quotes that Tyson uses to tear them down are real. The quote about the numerically illiterate newspaper headline? Fabricated. The quote about a member of Congress who said he had changed his views 360 degrees? It doesn’t exist. That time a U.S. president said “Our God is the God who named the stars” as a way of dividing Judeo-Christian beliefs from Islamic beliefs? It never happened.

These are not ticky-tack fouls. In the world of publishing and public speaking, quotes are evidence. Quotes are to journalism what data are to science. If they’re not real, they’re irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how juicy and revealing they are if they never happened. Fabrication is the cardinal sin of publishing. Just ask Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass, who to this day is prohibited from practicing law in the state of California because of his history of fabrication.

lol, sure he did...

He's about as smug as they get, I'm not a fan of his kind of popular science.

Pfft...really...wiki?

Anyway, it sounds like nothing but a big kerfuffle. Wiki only wanted some more proof that Bush never said it to begin with, other than the same stuff all originating from the federalist. Which of course, you can't prove. You can't prove Bush never said this. So is Tyson lying? We don't know.

And they did finally settle on the following which is currently in the Politics section of his wiki:

Quote:Tyson has claimed that, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then-President George W. Bush said, "Our God is the God who named the stars," in order to "distinguish we from they (Muslims)". According to Sean Davis from Thefederalist.com, the quote is false. Based on the article by Davis, Hemant Mehta called this "the most serious example of Tyson’s alleged quotation negligence" while Tom Jackson of the Tampa Tribune called it "... a vicious, gratuitous slander.

(09-19-2014 02:27 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  Anyway, it sounds like nothing but a big kerfuffle. Wiki only wanted some more proof that Bush never said it to begin with, other than the same stuff all originating from the federalist. Which of course, you can't prove. You can't prove Bush never said this. So is Tyson lying? We don't know.

The burden is on the person offering a quote as evidence to provide a citation so his claims can be checked, not the other way around.

Agree with Tom here. This is no biggie.

(09-19-2014 02:37 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Agree with Tom here. This is no biggie.

Really? This is a huge part of Tyson's shtick. His gimmick is to show how dumb everyone else is about science and math.

(09-19-2014 02:55 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  

(09-19-2014 02:37 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Agree with Tom here. This is no biggie.

Really? This is a huge part of Tyson's shtick. His gimmick is to show how dumb everyone else is about science and math.

I know. I'm not really care about his shtick, which is probably why this doesn't register big with me.