Neil deGrasse Tyson is a Slow Learner

The popular astrophysicist doubles down on his scant knowledge of vaccines by plugging "Shot in the Arm", a movie he helped produce.

As the public awaits Senate hearings around the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s appointment to head the Department of Health and Human Services, shrill outcries from establishment scientists and politicians are hitting the airwaves.

It’s not surprising that famed star gazer and public voice of sensibility, Neil deGrasse Tyson, decided to weigh in on his X account two days ago with this post:

Tyson was the Executive Producer of the movie “Shot in the Arm”, a film by Scott Hamilton Kennedy (no relation to RFK Jr.) that, according to Tyson, is “a scientifically informed, yet compassionate Documentary on the curious and costly phenomenon of Vaccine Hesitancy”. The film was initially released in 2023. Tyson must have felt that this would be a strategic time to reignite the fear we should have about people who eschew vaccines for the wrong reasons. RFK Jr. was cited in the movie as a principle spreader of misinformation which has lead to vaccine hesitancy in the public.

The surprising thing is that nearly two years ago, Tyson appeared on Del BigTree’s Highwire, when the show’s host and prominent advocate for vaccine safety politely but thoroughly exposed Tyson’s lack of understanding around the Covid shots as well as the key subject matter presented in the movie he helped produce.

I wrote about this remarkable and lengthy exchange between the two here:

Here are the highlights from the long form conversation about the movie:

• The producers, in their effort to offer viewers a balanced and “scientifically informed” position on the topic used interviews from vaccine fanatic Dr. Peter Hotez and now “preemptively pardoned”, goal-post shifting, gain-of-function funding perjurer Dr. Anthony Fauci and Del BigTree. The establishment doctors were interviewed in a staged fashion and given questions ahead of time. Del was confronted as he was leaving a meeting at the CDC and was asked for comments on the fly.

• Video of footage of BigTree speaking with a community of Hasidic Jews in NYC implying that a measles outbreak in that community was attributed to BigTree’s tragic advice. Del pointed out that those communities were having measles “parties” so that their community would contract the disease and obtain lifelong immunity.

• The movie producers highlight an outbreak of measles in DisneyLand which resulted from vaccine hesitancy, which, the viewer is led to believe is from BigTree’s movie “VAXXED”. BigTree informed the astrophysicist and self-taught vaccine expert that that outbreak was actually in 2014, two years before VAXXED was released.

• BigTree also showed Tyson official data from the California Department of Public Health around those who contracted measles in that outbreak. Most were adults. These were people who avoided the vaccine long before BigTree was on the scene. Vaccination status in 40% of those who got sick could not be confirmed, and 1/3 of the sick were vaccinated—proof not of vaccine hesitancy but vaccine failure.

Neil deGrasse Tyson acknowledged the veracity and logic of Del BigTree’s counter argument and offered no response.

The conversation was particularly interesting to me because I am fascinated by how people, especially those who believe they have a logical approach to the world, come to their conclusions.

Tyson’s approach was formulaic. He doesn’t have to be an expert on vaccines to know that they are safe and effective. You just have to trust scientific consensus. But what if opposing views are not allowed to enter the discussion?

Tyson had no answer.

Was Tyson aware that highly credentialed scientists were being censored from the start? He wasn’t. He was speechless when BigTree showed him the email exchange between Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci which exposed their plot to take down now NIH director nominee and co-author of The Great Barrington Declaration, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

Del showed Neil official data showing that there was a nearly 100% survival rate of Covid in most age groups. Why then were mandates necessary for everyone? Tyson fell into a trap. He quoted the talking heads like Rachel Maddow. It wasn’t about you! It was about protecting those who were more vulnerable!

So Del showed him a clip of Pfizer president of International Developed Markets, Janine Small, admitting that studies of the vaccine were never designed to test the prevention of transmission, yet that is what the public was told.

BigTree asked him if he was aware that Pfizer let the FDA’s advisory panel know that they had no evidence that their product prevented transmission of the disease in a briefing document they wrote in December 2020. Bigtree knew this because he read the document from Pfizer when it was released. Did Tyson know this?

Tyson said he did read the document, and when pressed, confirmed that he was aware of this too. WTF?

That was that.

Del courteously chose to not point out the blatant lapse in sense-making from America’s most famous gesticulating rationalist and public face of “the science”. They ended the interview collegially, sharing a bottle of suds in Del’s studio. Tyson was lucky to have gotten off easy. He surely realized that he had not done his homework.

And yet, he not only hasn’t retracted his support of the movie, he’s plugging it again.

Neil, I think Leonardo DaVinci had you in mind when he said “The Greatest Deception men suffer is from their own opinion.”