Your thoughts on Neil deGrasse Tyson

[HopDavid]

On 5/13/2024 at 5:08 AM, swansont said:

In any event, he has a number of journal publications in the last 30 years. here are three from <20 years back

The Faint-End Slopes of Galaxy Luminosity Functions in the COSMOS Field
C. T. Liu et al., 2008, Astrophysical Journal Letters, v.672, p.198
COSMOS: Hubble Space Telescope Observations
N. Scoville et al., 2007, Astrophysical Journal Supplement, v.172, p.38
The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS): Overview
N. Scoville et al., 2007, Astrophysical Journal Supplement, v.172, p.1

I'd like a citation on that "fact"

The COSMOS review papers in 2007 and 2008 have long lists of authors in which Neil's name appears very late. They seem to be courtesy mentions. It's not clear he contributed anything of substance to the projects.

Neil has done a total of five first author papers in his lifetime, all from the 80s and 90s.

Here is Neil taking offense at his U.T. advisors when they suggested he would not do much research. But it turns out the folks at U.T. had Neil pegged.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, HopDavid said:

The COSMOS review papers in 2007 and 2008 have long lists of authors in which Neil's name appears very late. They seem to be courtesy mentions. It's not clear he contributed anything of substance to the projects.

Neil has done a total of five first author papers in his lifetime, all from the 80s and 90s.

The COSMOS collaboration involves >200 scientists. I’ve been on papers with lots of authors (dozens, at a particle collider, so lots of people work on the experiment in various ways) but that doesn’t mean I had a minimal contribution, and being very late can be because of how they list authors after the first author (like, say, alphabetical? Looks that way. T is late in the alphabet)

You don’t have to like the guy, but this is just manufacturing reasons to bash him. 

[HopDavid]

18 minutes ago, swansont said:

The COSMOS collaboration involves >200 scientists. I’ve been on papers with lots of authors (dozens, at a particle collider, so lots of people work on the experiment in various ways) but that doesn’t mean I had a minimal contribution, and being very late can be because of how they list authors after the first author (like, say, alphabetical? Looks that way. T is late in the alphabet)

You don’t have to like the guy, but this is just manufacturing reasons to bash him. 

To show he's a working astrophysicist you produce a paper from 16 years ago that has his name on it. But you can't say what his contribution was.

Again, his last 1st author paper was from the 90s. He had a total of five 1st author papers in his lifetime. His U.T. profs nailed it when they noted research isn't his strong suit.

Dr. Barry of Cornell had this answer when asked if Neil was a practicing astrophysicist:

Quote

Not since graduate school (he did not successfully progress towards a degree at UT/Austin, and convinced Columbia to give him a second try). Aside from the obligatory papers describing his dissertation, he's got a paper on how to take dome flats, a bizarre paper speculating about an asteroid hitting Uranus, and courtesy mentions *very* late in the author lists of a few big projects in which it is unclear what, if anything, of substance he contributed. No first author papers of any real significance whatsoever. Nor is the there any evidence that he has been awarded any telescope time on significant instruments as PI since grad school, despite the incredibly inflated claims in his published CVs. He cozied up to Bush and pushed Bush's version of man to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, and now gets appointed to just about every high level political advisory board. To an actual astronomer, this is almost beyond inconceivable. It's just bizarre. To answer Delon's question, no: he is not a practicing astrophysicist - Don Barry, Ph.D. Dept of Astronomy, Cornell University

That was in 2008. It is even more true today.

I would give Neil credit as a science educator if he had standards for rigor and accuracy. He does not. So much of his pop science is wrong.

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, HopDavid said:

To show he's a working astrophysicist you produce a paper from 16 years ago that has his name on it. But you can't say what his contribution was.

The question I answered was “Can NdGT be called a scientist in your opinion, given that he's hardly published anything in 30 years?”

I provided three papers he has. 

I didn’t attempt to address whether he’s a “working astrophysicist.” That’s not where the goalposts were.

 

Quote

Again, his last 1st author paper was from the 90s. He had a total of five 1st author papers in his lifetime.

The thing is, my last first-author paper wasn’t much later than that, and have perhaps six of them. I’m on a few dozen papers total. I find this line of criticism kind of insulting. If someone used these criteria to suggest that I wasn’t a practicing physicist before I retired I would have told them to f%&# off into the sun.

 

[Mordred]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

 

The thing is, my last first-author paper wasn’t much later than that, and have perhaps six of them. I’m on a few dozen papers total. I find this line of criticism kind of insulting. If someone used these criteria to suggest that I wasn’t a practicing physicist before I retired I would have told them to f%&# off into the sun.

 

So would I actually there are plenty of physicist jobs that have little to do with publishing papers such as teaching 

[HopDavid]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

The question I answered was “Can NdGT be called a scientist in your opinion, given that he's hardly published anything in 30 years?”

I provided three papers he has. 

I didn’t attempt to address whether he’s a “working astrophysicist.” That’s not where the goalposts were.

 

The thing is, my last first-author paper wasn’t much later than that, and have perhaps six of them. I’m on a few dozen papers total. I find this line of criticism kind of insulting. If someone used these criteria to suggest that I wasn’t a practicing physicist before I retired I would have told them to f%&# off into the sun.

 

You gave three papers that have his name on them along with many other names. It is completely accurate to say "he's hardly published anything in 30 years." At least not when it comes to peer reviewed papers.

In addition to not doing research Neil deGrasse Tyson flubs very basic physics in his pop science shows and articles. You haven't noticed?

1 hour ago, Mordred said:

So would I actually there are plenty of physicist jobs that have little to do with publishing papers such as teaching 

As I've already said -- I would give Neil credit for being a teacher if he were rigorous and accurate. He is not. 

He is often stepping outside his wheel house and making wrong statements in the fields of math, biology, medicine and history. He is really, really bad at history.

Neil deGrasse Tyson even makes embarrassing flubs when it comes to basic physics and astronomy.

[swansont]

35 minutes ago, HopDavid said:

You gave three papers that have his name on them along with many other names. It is completely accurate to say "he's hardly published anything in 30 years." At least not when it comes to peer reviewed papers.

And the person who asked the question, and anyone else, is free to draw their own conclusion from that.

35 minutes ago, HopDavid said:

In addition to not doing research Neil deGrasse Tyson flubs very basic physics in his pop science shows and articles. You haven't noticed?

Once again, this is not what I was addressing. You are assuming that a lack of commentary means something more; this is a phenomenon on social media where someone says, “I like dogs” and the response is “Why do you hate cats?”

I don’t much care if it’s a failure of logic or active trolling. You addressed me by moving the goalposts, insinuating that I had somehow defended a proposition that had not been made. AFAICT the information I provided was factual and on-topic. 

And yet you keep trying to draw me into a confrontation. Truth be told, I haven’t watched much of NdGT, so I’m not in a position to critique or defend anything. I don’t watch much pop-sci physics (unless it’s in my wheelhouse and I’m commenting on it). That’s a choice.

Being a dick is a choice, too.

 

[HopDavid]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

...You addressed me by moving the goalposts, insinuating that I had somehow defended a proposition that had not been made. AFAICT the information I provided was factual and on-topic. ....

You were responding to the statement "Can NdGT be called a scientist in your opinion, given that he's hardly published anything in 30 years?"

You were apparently trying to rebut this by mentioning 3 papers with his name on it 2007 and 2008.

Neil's last 1st author paper was in 1993. 

The assessment that Neil has hardly published anything in 30 years is correct. And, in my opinion, he should not be called a scientist.

This isn't moving the goal posts.

[Mordred]

He does have the formal credentials it doesn't matter how much material one publishes or how long ago.

For the record simply having a Ph.D in physics doesn't automatically entail knowing every aspect of physics. 

 For example my formal training in Cosmology didn't necessarily involve say String theory. Knowing String theory isn't necessary to understand and have expertise in the field of Cosmology. That was a field I chose to study on my own outside of my formal training.

If I recall Neil is an astrophysicist so his formal training has different requirements than those of my field of study. Which when you get down to it is no different than the skill set between Swansont and myself as we both took different physics branches in our formal training so we both have different expertise in physics.

I read his dissertation years ago he is quite knowledgeable in that particular topic although I haven't a copy today

"A Study of the Abundance Distributions Along the Minor Axis of the Galactic Bulge" 

 

Edited Monday at 08:32 PM by Mordred

[HopDavid]

9 minutes ago, Mordred said:

For the record simply having a Ph.D in physics doesn't automatically entail knowing every aspect of physics. 

 For example my formal training in Cosmology didn't necessarily involve say String theory. Knowing String theory isn't necessary to understand and have expertise in the field of Cosmology. That was a field I chose to study on my own outside of my formal training.

If I recall Neil is an astrophysicist so his formal training has different requirements than those of my field of study. Which when you get down to it is no different than the skill set between Swansont and myself as we both took different physics branches in our formal training so we both have different expertise in physics.

I'm talking about freshman physics. Not string theory or advanced concepts in cosmology.

How about calculating the artificial gravity in a rotating space station?

Neil claims the space station in 2001 A Space Odyssey was rotating three times too fast so passengers would weigh triple their earth weight. Does anyone here see a problem with that? Can anyone here calculate the artificial gravity for a 150 meter radius space station doing about 1 RPM?

Or how about Neil telling us that rocket propellant goes exponentially with payload mass?

If Neil is going to attempt an explainer he needs to dust off his old textbooks and review his material. Something he neglects to do time and time again.

[Mordred]

Well for one thing his job is a science popularizer. That is what earns him his paycheque. In that aspect he does do an excellent job in many cases he is following a script. That in an of itself doesn't require expertise in the topics he is discussing.  That doesn't mean he didn't retain his skills in his field of expertise. 

For one thing galactic mass distributions isn't a popular topic in pop media. Secondly his audience is assumed to have next to zero understanding of physics in general so anything he states is essentially dummied down and that in and of itself can lead to inaccuracies.

(Trust me on that, the effort to dummy down difficult physics topics is one of my greatest challenges when I reply to posts here on this forum) those replies can oft get misrepresented as a result.

I have little doubt that if Neil had to work on a research project in his expertise he would excel at that.

Pop media isn't a reliable method to judge a physicist skill set a far more reliable way is to study his research papers and not pop media.

Lol there was a lot of statements Hawkings said in some pop media that had my head shaking but there was little doubt he was a physicist.

Edited Monday at 09:36 PM by Mordred

[HopDavid]

9 minutes ago, Mordred said:

Well for one thing his job is a science popularizer. That is what earns him his paycheque. In that aspect he does do an excellent job in many cases he is following a script. That in an of itself doesn't require expertise in the topics he is discussing.  That doesn't mean he didn't retain his skills in his field of expertise.

Neil does an excellent job entertaining his audience.

Whether he's popularizing science is another question. Is he really stimulating a deeper interest?

If so why don't his fans notice when he flubs basic math, physics, astronomy, medicine and history?

[studiot]

2 hours ago, HopDavid said:

You were responding to the statement "Can NdGT be called a scientist in your opinion, given that he's hardly published anything in 30 years?"

Have you read the entire thread (which was not yours) ?

The original question was not an introduction to a character aassassination.

Please don't turn it into one.

 

My answer to the original question is that I don't pay much attention to the Man so I don't care one way or the other.

[HopDavid]

1 hour ago, Mordred said:

He does have the formal credentials it doesn't matter how much material one publishes or how long ago.

Prior to Columbia they dissolved Neil's doctoral committee at University of Texas, essentially flunking him. His advisors at U.T. correctly informed him he had no aptitude for astrophysics. A decision they are still receiving hatred and criticism for to this day.

However Neil is charismatic and has good networking skills. He found a sympathetic advisor with R. Michael Rich. Neil did some grunt work for Rich measuring the metallicity of stars in the galactic bulge. And Rich hired students to help Neil with this project.

At U.T. Neil took offense that his advisors suggested he wouldn't do much research. Link. However his advisors were correct.

Columbia should be embarrassed they gave Neil his credentials. The man is a Kardashian scientist.

[dimreepr]

16 hours ago, HopDavid said:

Prior to Columbia they dissolved Neil's doctoral committee at University of Texas, essentially flunking him. His advisors at U.T. correctly informed him he had no aptitude for astrophysics. A decision they are still receiving hatred and criticism for to this day.

However Neil is charismatic and has good networking skills. He found a sympathetic advisor with R. Michael Rich. Neil did some grunt work for Rich measuring the metallicity of stars in the galactic bulge. And Rich hired students to help Neil with this project.

At U.T. Neil took offense that his advisors suggested he wouldn't do much research. Link. However his advisors were correct.

Columbia should be embarrassed they gave Neil his credentials. The man is a Kardashian scientist.

Who won?

 

[exchemist]

18 hours ago, HopDavid said:

I'm talking about freshman physics. Not string theory or advanced concepts in cosmology.

How about calculating the artificial gravity in a rotating space station?

Neil claims the space station in 2001 A Space Odyssey was rotating three times too fast so passengers would weigh triple their earth weight. Does anyone here see a problem with that? Can anyone here calculate the artificial gravity for a 150 meter radius space station doing about 1 RPM?

Or how about Neil telling us that rocket propellant goes exponentially with payload mass?

If Neil is going to attempt an explainer he needs to dust off his old textbooks and review his material. Something he neglects to do time and time again.

Erm, that would be an angular velocity of about 0.1/sec, wouldn’t it? So an acceleration ~ 1.5m/sec2, about the gravity on the moon.  Is that right?
 

But where do you get the radius of the space station from, and the rotation rate? And when and where did Tyson make this claim? I can’t seem to find a reference to it.

Edited Tuesday at 03:13 PM by exchemist

[HopDavid]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

Erm, that would be an angular velocity of about 0.1/sec, wouldn’t it? So an acceleration ~ 1.5m/sec2, about the gravity on the moon.  Is that right?
 

But where do you get the radius of the space station from, and the rotation rate? And when and where did Tyson make this claim? I can’t seem to find a reference to it.

A wiki with info on the space station in 2001 A space Odyssey: Link.

You are correct that it would be about the moon's gravity.

Neil claiming the space station rotates three times too fast therefore passengers would weigh triple their earth weight: Link.

Generally when Neil says he's done a calculation I think "show me the math". In this case the so called centrifugal force goes with the square of angular velocity. So if the station were spinning three times too fast the passengers would weigh nine times as much. 

Am I wrong in thinking that this is freshman physics? I've attached a page from my orbital mechanics coloring book.

[exchemist]

47 minutes ago, HopDavid said:

A wiki with info on the space station in 2001 A space Odyssey: Link.

You are correct that it would be about the moon's gravity.

Neil claiming the space station rotates three times too fast therefore passengers would weigh triple their earth weight: Link.

Generally when Neil says he's done a calculation I think "show me the math". In this case the so called centrifugal force goes with the square of angular velocity. So if the station were spinning three times too fast the passengers would weigh nine times as much. 

Am I wrong in thinking that this is freshman physics? I've attached a page from my orbital mechanics coloring book.

Hmm, I see the link actually says the space station was designed to simulate lunar gravity.

As to the radio clip you linked, well I think you have got deGrasse Tyson bang to rights! 😆

How very sloppy of him. Sort of fits with my feeling he tends to be a bit glib. it must be very annoying for the film makers to go to the trouble of getting something  scientifically right (God knows, it is rare enough for them to bother),  only to have it traduced by a public science “personality” who should know better.

By the way I rather like the “Kardashian Index”. I was delighted to see that, though their Exhibit A is Tyson, Exhibit B is  Britain’s Brian Cox. He is someone I have always found irritating -and again, glib - so I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who finds him so. But his index is an order of magnitude lower than N deG T. Should this have a logarithmic scale, perhaps? 

Edited Tuesday at 05:18 PM by exchemist

[Airbrush]

On 5/5/2024 at 1:44 AM, Otto Kretschmer said:

What do you think of this guy? How does he compare to Carl Sagan in your opinion?

Personally I like him. He did an awesome job in Cosmos: A Spacetime Oddysey. I am yet to watch Cosmos: Possible Worlds as it didn't air in my country. 

Although he's sometimes wrong when he talks about stuff that isn't space related. His remarks after a school shooting on the US were quite insensitive too.

Any thoughts?

I love Neil and have seen many episodes of "Startalk."  Have you seen any of those?  I also thought his Cosmos series was FANTASTIC and I was also a big fan of Carl Sagan's series.

[HopDavid]

10 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Hmm, I see the link actually says the space station was designed to simulate lunar gravity.

As to the radio clip you linked, well I think you have got deGrasse Tyson bang to rights! 😆

How very sloppy of him. Sort of fits with my feeling he tends to be a bit glib. it must be very annoying for the film makers to go to the trouble of getting something  scientifically right (God knows, it is rare enough for them to bother),  only to have it traduced by a public science “personality” who should know better.

Neil invests quite a bit of time and effort on showmanship: vocal delivery, crafting palatable soundbites and jokes, wardrobe, hand gestures, etc.. He is a great showman!

But he often neglects to review the topics he supposedly explains. So much of his material is wrong.

Here's Neil saying rocket propellant mass goes exponentially with payload mass: Link. It would have taken him five minutes to dust off his college textbooks and review the rocket equation.

Or here's Neil saying the James Webb Space Telescope is parked at sun earth L2 point in earth's shadow: Link. I admit I thought they were going to park in earth's shadow, it would make sense for an infra red telescope that needs to be kept cold. But for various reasons they put it in a large halo orbit around the L2 point. Before using that notion in explainer he should check if it's true.

However his wrong math and science are merely annoying. It's not like 99.9% of his audience will ever need to know how to calculate centrifugal force, for example.

It is Tyson's wrong history that makes me angry.

For example Neil was telling Fareed Zakaria that nobody thought of miniaturizing electronics before NASA came along. He credits NASA for starting the electronics revolution that started picking up momentum in the 60s.

It is true that NASA as well as the military funded R&D for miniaturizing electronics for compact and light weight rocket and missile avionics. This probably did put the U.S. in the lead in pushing Moore's Law for a time.

But the miniaturization of electronics was already well under way by the time NASA came along. People were using transistor radios years before NASA was formed in 1958. Wikipedia has a nice article on the history of the transistor: Link.

I completely agree with Neil that NASA has been a technology driver and should be better funded. But making up bull shit history to support this talking point can do more harm than good, in my opinion.

And then there's Neil's fictitious histories that he uses to support opinions I disagree with. I'm fine with differing opinions. But I'm not fine with using misinformation to push a narrative.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, HopDavid said:

Am I wrong in thinking that this is freshman physics?

In freshman physics they point out that it’s centripetal force.

[HopDavid]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

In freshman physics they point out that it’s centripetal force.

Nope. In orbiting bodies gravity provides the centripetal force. In a spinning space station floor of the space station exerts centripetal force. The so called centrifugal force (actually inertia in a rotating frame) pushes outward.

I'm attaching the relevant XKCD comic: 

 

Edited Tuesday at 07:23 PM by HopDavid
wrote "rotation" when I meant to write "rotating"

[swansont]

57 minutes ago, HopDavid said:

Nope. In orbiting bodies gravity provides the centripetal force. In a spinning space station floor of the space station exerts centripetal force. The so called centrifugal force (actually inertia in a rotating frame) pushes outward.

You say nope but then correctly point out that it’s centripetal force in both cases.

[HopDavid]

30 minutes ago, swansont said:

You say nope but then correctly point out that it’s centripetal force in both cases.

Please reread what I wrote.

Centripetal is towards the center of rotation. Centrifugal is outward. 

ω^2 r gives what seems like outward acceleration in a rotating frame.

[swansont]

31 minutes ago, HopDavid said:

Please reread what I wrote.

Centripetal is towards the center of rotation. Centrifugal is outward. 

ω^2 r gives what seems like outward acceleration in a rotating frame.

Outward is what you exert, but Newton's laws are about what is exerted on you. The force on an object moving in a circle (such as a rotating space station) is toward the center of the circle.