Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says he has no problem with Americans being skeptical of “scientific truth,” but that when they elect lawmakers with a like mind that “it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Tyson, who is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, was asked Sunday by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to respond to people who think all of science is simply theory, not fact, including on the issue of climate change.
Tyson argued that these people are lacking a part of their education.
“If anyone utters the word, ‘it’s just a theory,’ it means they’re missing a piece of their education where they do not fully understand what science is and how and why it works,” Tyson said.
Earlier in the interview Tyson posited that K-12 education, in conjunction with specific classes on chemistry, biology, physics and geology, is missing a broad course explaining what science is, in order to drive students’ curiosity on how and why things work.
While Tyson said he’s not trying to “beat folks over the head in power, because they’re duly elected by a population that wants their leadership to serve them,” he contended that it is his role as an educator he sees a “recipe for disaster” because voters are electing people into office without analyzing for themselves how theories are affirmed in the scientific community.
“Today you have people who — who will just accept what anyone tells them, or think that they can deny an objectively established scientific truth and then I don’t mind that in a free country, think what you want,” he said. “But if you now rise to power and have — and have jurisdiction over legislation, and you pivot that on what you don’t know about how the world works, that’s a recipe for disaster.”
“I would say it’s the beginning of the unraveling of an informed democracy,” Tyson added.
Tyson has spoken out against a Trump administration that critics say is averse to certain facets of established science, including global warming. For example, the Trump administration is looking at bailing on the Paris climate change agreement. In recent weeks there have been marches in Washington, D.C., and worldwide, to draw attention to science, and another dedicated solely to climate change, that challenge Trump’s environmental agenda.
In March, Trump’s first proposed budget prompted a Twitter rant from Tyson, who said that the proposed funding cuts for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities could make America “weak,” “sick” and “stupid.”
