I recently wrote about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “selective misremembering” of quotes to support some of the pseudo-facts he regularly tries to foist on an oblivious public. He got called out on it in a couple of articles at the Federalist, but instead of acknowledging his error, he decided it was a good idea to double down with additional foolishness. The latest chapter in this continuing saga is chronicled over at the Christian Post in a great little article explaining that he absolutely remembers hearing the quote and even wrote it down at the time, but there is no record anywhere nor does Tyson produce any evidence. Here is a good quote that describes this particular abuse.
Jonathan Alder, Johan Verheij memorial professor of law and director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation at Case Western University School of Law, has been writing about the controversy for The Washington Post blog The Volokh Conspiracy, and described the situation this way: “What is really so ‘mysterious’ is why Tyson finds it so difficult to confess error and pretends that Bush’s 2003 remarks were only just-now discovered. … Yet if this is the source of the quote, then nearly everything else Tyson claimed about it and its significance is false (as is the account of the quote’s provenance he gave last night).”
He has not apologized yet for this particular offense, but is “looking for a good medium & occasion.” If he ever gets around to it, maybe then he can start on some of the other ones described so helpfully in the Federalist article.
Betty Blonde #174 – 03/17/2009
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.