
Why ‘Cosmos’ Host Neil deGrasse Tyson Has the World in His Hands - JumpCrisscross
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/03/09/why-cosmos-host-neil-degrasse-tyson-has-the-world-in-his-hands/
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AnotherDesigner
I love how arrogant writers think that if you want GMO labeling suddenly
you're anti-science or a nut-job. Personally, I'd like the entire food chain
carefully documented and put online so data could be gathered, trends could be
established and science can be done.

A lot of things that have been considered safe for generations we now
understand to have harmful effects on the population or segments of it. As we
begin to engineer our food, instead of just growing it, we should take extra
care to understand the effects of what we're doing. We should also give people
the choice to opt-out of this big experiment by letting people know what's in
their food and letting them have the option to decide if they want to consume
it.

I've been on the internet long enough to understand the arguments for GMOs, I
just think people should know where their food comes from and what's in it.

~~~
grimtrigger
People who know about the issue already know what food is GMO. Its all the
food that isn't labelled "GMO free". So a label will not change your level of
knowledge about your food and where it comes from.

Imagine if you went to the grocery store and noticed everything said "contains
dihydrogen monoxide" (H2O). Does such a label inform, or merely confuse,
consumers?

*not a chemist, so please give me a pass on the H20 example

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suprgeek
NdGT is a rock star communicator and all around excellent proponent of Science
- no doubt.

However, does this statement from him make sense: "To be scientifically
literate, I’m not going to require that you have a body of knowledge."?

~~~
cortesoft
I think he is meaning a 'specific' body of knowledge.. saying that scientific
literacy is not about knowing a set of scientific facts, because there will
always be scientific facts that you don't know. Scientific literacy is about
knowing how Science is used to find those facts.

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abstractbill
This is the second time in a few days Cosmos has made it onto the front page
and then received a ton of flags very quickly. Can someone explain why?

~~~
pekk
Neil deGrasse Tyson is popular among atheists, a group considered obnoxious
and inappropriate. I'm not delivering this judgement myself, just reporting
why people would report it.

~~~
lotsofmangos
Excuse me for saying so, but I think you may need a little sit down. You do
not seem to be at all well.

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mnl
I fear popular science. If you want to teach what scientific method can do,
show people how it works, make them do science. For instance let kids study
how to grow beans in different soils, take measures of stem diameter, height,
quantify things, check hypotheses, make experiments!

Instead of teaching the method and providing a reasonable introductory
education what popular science usually does is tell people not to worry,
because there are scientists who already know not only the answers but the
relevant questions through some magical hand-waving called Science that
involves a lot of CGI.

So people can relax and be intellectually lazy because Science. This is wrong.
Big Science is demanding, slow, hard, and can't be indefinitely simplified
without turning it into a lie. But science is a method, why don't you show how
it works?

There is a famous Feynman piece called "Cargo Cult Science" in which he tells
a story about experiments with rats that gives the gist of it all:

"All experiments in psychology are not of this type, however. For example,
there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and
so on with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very
interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where
the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted
to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from
wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where
the food had been the time before.

The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so
beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before?
Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other
doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the
faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he
thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change
the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats
might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the
laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still
the rats could tell.

He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they
ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he
covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool
the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any
of his conditions, the rats could tell.

Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is
the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it
uncovers that clues that the rat is really using, not what you think it's
using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have
to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with
rat-running.

I looked up the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and
the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his
criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just
went right on running the rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to
the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to,
because he didn't discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all
the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying
attention to experiments like that is a characteristic example of cargo cult
science."

Instead of that popular science gets you an authoritative figure feeding the
audience with multiverses as if they were a matter of fact. Well, they're not.

~~~
abstractbill
_I fear popular science..._

The same arguments were made when Carl Sagan was busy popularizing science.
But Neil Degrasse Tyson says he was hugely inspired by Sagan. Who knows how
many other scientists were? Who knows how many future scientists will be
inspired by Neil Degrasse Tyson?

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seisette
First of all, I wouldn't even know who deGrasse Tyson was if it wasn't for
sites like 4chan, reddit and hn. But apparently, he "has the world in his
hands."

Secondly, I want to comment on this:

>It’s hard to deny that we live in an era in which science — as both a
worldview and as a practice — is under near-constant assault. On the left,
there are those who rail against the dangers of GMOs and vaccines. On the
right, there are those who deny climate change and the evolution of species."

Just because people are opposed to some applications of science, or skeptical
of some scientific theories, doesn't mean science is under assault. Besides,
science is defined by its method, so, the only people who could possibly pose
any threat to it are the scientists themselves, should they forget this fact.

~~~
latj
Yeah, there are two main groups that oppose GMOs. One group is founded on fear
of new technology- and this is what NdGT means.

But others oppose not the science of GMOs but the way they are used as a tool
to control food and the business around food.

I think NdGT does a disservice to people by trying to lump both groups of
advocates into the same camp. Some people in the social-concerns group have
thoughtful, logical perspectives. Some are even scientists themselves.

~~~
o0-0o
I'd like to point out that a lot of intelligent people opposed to GMOs are not
opposed on religious or biological concerns. The reason a lot of intelligent
people are opposed to GMOs is because of the fertilizers and pesticides that
are used on them. Fertilizers and pesticides are dangerous and harmful.

~~~
glenra
One _benefit_ of many GMO crops is that they allow farmers to use much _less_
in the way of pesticides and fertilizers than they otherwise would have.

For example, BT Cotton kills cotton bollworms on its own, so you don't have to
spray it with additional pesticides that would kill lots of _other_ bugs (such
as aphids) and might potentially cause harm elsewhere in the food chain. (BT
Cotton and BT Corn both reduce insecticide use by about half.)

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/13/gm-
crops-...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/13/gm-crops-
environment-study)

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/fewer-pesticides-
fa...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/fewer-pesticides-farming-with-
gmos/)

~~~
latj
Your point is well taken but I think it illustrates mine as well.

There are serious problems with allowing a small non-elected group of people
to represent the interests of all humans regarding agriculture.

But anytime anyone tries to bring this up the discussion very quickly falls
back into the realm of science- is it safe? Is it better for the environment?

There is a set of separate (and in my opinion more important) social issues
that should be discussed and decisions that should be made but it isnt
happening because of the diversion of the science. People who love science
have an obligation not just to decision making based on evidence but also in
considering the ethics of those decisions and the resulting consequences.

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tomhallett
I really think Comedy Central should syndicate/distribute/whatever StarTalk.
The science is so good and the comedy is like no other. It's such an
interesting combination.....
[http://youtube.com/watch?v=WBQn0nD27nc](http://youtube.com/watch?v=WBQn0nD27nc)

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aashishkoirala
Tyson is generally well received and seems genuine as well. I wonder what
people think about Michio Kaku. I can't shake the feeling that Kaku is a bit
phony.

------
api
"How to explain the rise of Neil deGrasse Tyson? It’s hard to deny that we
live in an era in which science — as both a worldview and as a practice — is
under near-constant assault. On the left, there are those who rail against the
dangers of GMOs and vaccines. On the right, there are those who deny climate
change and the evolution of species."

I've thought about this a lot. I know a number of highly intelligent and
articulate people who seem to hold a kind of animosity toward science, and in
talking to them I always try to figure out exactly why this is.

I've identified what I think are several reasons.

(1)

Science is about reality. It's about learning about reality and a commitment
to reality. Unfortunately for a great many people reality just flat out sucks
and there's little they feel they can do about it.

You're stuck in a dead-end job with debts piling up, an underwater house, and
failing health. The last thing you want to hear about is _reality_. You want
unreality-- the more unreal the better-- because your reality is awful and
then you're going to die.

(2)

There has been a general loss of confidence in institutions, scientific and
academic ones included.

I don't think this is wholly irrational. We've had multiple presidential
administrations that have lied us into war. The financial industry has run
what amount to pump-and-dump scams against the public (e.g. the housing
bubble). These sorts of things show people that institutions aren't to be
trusted. They are often either predatory or incompetent.

What's that got to do with science?

Well... from an ordinary person's point of view, science belongs to the same
stratospheric realm as high finance and government. It's part of the world of
"big" things... "big" things that stomp on the little guy.

(3) (and I think this might be the big one)

Science says things that are concrete and falsifiable. Since humans are not
infallible, that means that some of what you say is almost certainly going to
turn out to be wrong.

Superstitious ideologies on the other hand seldom make concrete promises or
provide answers that are actually testable or verifiable. As a result, they
are never wrong. They're never wrong because they are not really saying
anything. (Politicians and salesmen are also masters of this art... it's not
by any means confined to religion.)

Every time science makes a mistake, it counts against it in peoples' minds.
"Oh, they were wrong about trans fats... that means GMO foods can't be trusted
either!"

~~~
hitchhiker999
Interesting post. I'd like to _think_ of myself as 'intelligent' \- as most of
us do - I'm Mensa, I'm a programmer of 30+ years blah blah. I live and breath
'logic'. So take this for what it's worth.

2 is the big one from my perspective. I think it's extremely naive to
immediately trust anything coming from mainstream science / medicine these
days. GMOs, as an example, demonstrates the inability of some scientists to
understand the concept of 'playing with machines they neither understand
holistically, nor practically'.

Even 'slightly large' software projects, where the variables are all contained
in a highly controlled and observable environment, go horribly wrong. I can't
imagine the arrogance you need to mess with nature confidently.

Nature is a complex machine, don't f* around with it unless you a) can create
it from scratch b) are absolutely sure what you're doing is not going to
affect the machine's surrounding environment. We are far, far away from those
necessary understandings. I would think this was obvious, but apparently it's
not.

I get the impression that in America I'd be shouted down for saying this.

~~~
stopcodon
This will come off as a strawman, but the same could be said for every drug
ever prescribed. There's absolutely no way to quantify the effects an
"unnatural" molecule will have on a human body, since everyone will have
physiological differences, and there will be a near infinite number of
environmental factors. The best we can do is use the sum of human knowledge as
a framework to test that drug to the best of our ability, and try to figure
out if it's safe by examining the evidence.

I'm an agricultural geneticist (not in industry, I have never worked on GMOs
but I do keep up to date on the literature so I can educate others), so I will
be biased here, but GMOs have been very carefully examined for decades with no
credible evidence to suggest they pose a threat to human health.

Without going in to a lesson on population genetics, most genes, even if they
found their way in to a natural population outside of a farm, would not spread
in the population because of selection against them. Empirically the frequency
of this kind of spread from crop to natural population has been found to be
nearly non-existent, which is why it's not a huge concern.

Humans have been causing artificial selection on plants for thousands of
years. Breeding for completely unnatural traits, and even crossing entirely
different species to create novel organisms for agriculture. GMOs are far more
controlled in this sense, where you know exactly what you're doing to the
genome. Combining two genomes separated by millions of years of evolution at
random through forced sexual reproduction in plants happens every day in crop
breeding but nobody cares because it has this arbitrary label of "natural",
presumably because it doesn't involve some sinister figure in a labcoat.

Unfortunately the anti-GMO activists do an excellent job of spreading
misinformation and distrust of scientists to the public. The large biotech
companies can do very little for the PR of GMOs, leaving academics to try and
fight against the tide of hatred for what is actually an incredible tool for
solving the worlds food shortages. Sadly most scientists are too busy writing
grants to bother.

~~~
hitchhiker999
Thanks for posting this!

" _most_ genes" \- I think where our food supply is concerned it probably
needs to be '100%' \- but that's not to dismiss the valid perspective you
raise.

I just hope open-minded people are overseeing the processes, and not leaving
the chicken coop to the corporations. GMO has a valid place, an important
place, in our technological "bag-of-tricks." It's only the apparent short-
sightedness of certain members of the scientific community that sets some of
us on edge.

------
thirsteh
"I just wanted to tell you good luck--we're all counting on you."

~~~
cskozmo
'Airplane!'?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmHeP9Sve48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmHeP9Sve48)

------
KhalilK
There are only few things funnier than people fresh from watching a Neil
deGasse Tyson lecture, acting like they earned a PHD in Astrophysics and Anti
theism across an hour on the couch.

~~~
watty
There are few things funnier than people who get offended by a show about
science.

~~~
KhalilK
I personally am a huge fan of both NDT and the show, my comment was based on a
mere realistic view that Cosmos remains a science show and though educating,
it is not THAT educating.

