Last week, astrophysicist and famed science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared on The Highwire, an antivax video podcast, to “debate” its host, antivax propagandist Del Bigtree. This incident demonstrates quite well why it is almost never a good idea for a scientist to agree to “debate” science deniers.
David Gorskion April 10, 2023
Who is David Gorski?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gorski
Is David Gorski qualified to talk about vaccines?
Not really.
His specialty is breast cancer.
I suspect that down deep, Gorski's interest in vaccines, stems from his work with cancer.
At some level, Gorski has to wonder what causes cancer, and how to prevent it,
So why is Gorski shit-posting about vaccines every day, instead of staying in his own lane, and posting about breast cancer instead?
To be a specialist, requires you to foresake all other specialties.
The phrase "Jack Of All Trades, Master of NONE" has an equivalent saying in every culture and every language.
David Gorski is also responsible for recruiting students from the University he works at, to do pro-vaccine trolling online.
Anyway, Del Bigtree did a fantastic job of debating Neil Degrasse Tyson,
and i can see why David Gorski is pissed!
Del Bigtree Debates Neil Degrasse Tyson
its a 2 hour video. starts kinda slow, but the tension grows every minute,
until NDT is begging for mercy, begging for a "real" medical professional to step up to answer Bigtree's points
https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/del-debates-neil-degrasse-tyson/
NDT was stating a lot of things ABOUT science and was bouncing around with nuggets of science trivia. His basic points being that science must have consensus and peer review. He threw in statistics and basically stated that this was not an intuitive branch of mathematics because it was developed after calculus.
Whenever Del made a point that illustrated advances in science which came from outside the consensus, NDT quickly stated that the original consensus was not in science at all. Therefore, the advancement which came from outside, was true science. It was a side step BS dance move.
When Del pressed for NDT to admit that there are Vax injuries that should be investigated. NDT would not acknowledge the injuries and instead backed away from it by stating that he was not a medical scientist and that he was an astrophysicist.
OK. Fine. But then I question why he was with Del in the first place. NDT was stating to trust the science, but by his own admission this was not his field.
And I question why I should care about ANYTHING NDT has to state beyond space and planets. And his trust the science and scientists stance is suspect because it might not be true science as stated in the previous paragraph. See NDT circular reasoning?
NDT puts himself on stage as this big shot scientist, but runs for cover when it is clearly shown that observational facts are not aligning with the consensus. Basic 8th public school science teaches (at least they used to) is that the conclusion is incomplete at best, if not wrong. More investigation is needed.
Also, back to statistics. Stats clearly show that motality rate of COVID was less that 1%. So where's the emergency?!?!?
Painful to watch. I went from a neutral opinion of NDT to seeing him as little more than a joke.