Neil Degrasse Tyson is the latest celebrity to end up on the #MeToo list, accused of being both handsy and rapey. As usual, there’s no evidence of the accusations being presented for incidents that are supposed to have occurred many years ago. Did he do it? Dunno. Some of the accusations (that he drugged & raped someone) he is denying outright; others (that he put a hand someplace inappropriate) he says are down to misunderstandings. He has issued a lengthy statement about the accusations on his Facebook page where he explains his side.
In that statement he says this, which demonstrate the incompatible world views between STEM and #MeToo:
In any claim, evidence matters. Evidence always matters.
Sorry, Neil, that’s not true. Evidence not only doesn’t matter sometimes; sometimes a complete absence of evidence is evidence of guilt.
The most interesting bit is what he wrote about his most serious accuser:
For me, what was most significant, was that in this new life, long after dropping out of astrophysics graduate school, she was posting videos of colored tuning forks endowed with vibrational therapeutic energy that she channels from the orbiting planets. As a scientist, I found this odd. Meanwhile, according to her blog posts, the drug and rape allegation comes from an assumption of what happened to her during a night that she cannot remember.
Yikes. Assume his summary is accurate: what rational person would credit accusations from such a basis?
On the one hand, NDT is a celebrity, and history has shown that celbrities tend to be rather squirrely with regards to the truth, personal space and basic morality. Something about fame and power leads people to lose their friggen’ minds. On the other hand, if we are to have a functional society, evidence *should* matter.