I tracked down a screen shot I found on the internet this
week to verify its veracity and was pleasantly surprised. Apparently, a viewer wrote to demand that
Mike Rowe be fired from his job narrating “How the Universe Works” because of
personal views that the viewer found inconsistent. You can read Rowe’s post on
his blog here. I found it surprisingly scholarly and
enlighteningly introspective both of science itself as well as those interested
therein. However, Rowe is not considered
by many to be a subject matter expert in science, and most of my students will
eagerly confess when I ask them next week that they know about Bill Nye the
Mechanical Engineering guy. Perhaps the
most annoying observation from Rowe’s response is that his detractor objected
based entirely on emotion but claimed to be a science aficionado. More importantly, I think that Nye’s
followers are likely to detest Rowe’s show, because Nye’s show is childish and
emotive, with very little in the way of substance.
I watched Bill Nye for the first time this past weekend, and
I was mortified. I found the episodes to
be cartoonish, pedantic, and condescending.
They also seemed obsessed with fire and explosions, as if that’s all we
do in chemistry. The only redeeming
factor was Candace Cameron as a counterbalance to Nye’s off the wall
antics. The episodes were odd, in the
way that most things from that period are like hammer pants and tie dye, and I
felt less intelligent watching them. I
can hardly believe that so many students considered that to be a good science
show, as it dealt so little with scholarship and so much with pageantry. Contrarily, Mike Rowe’s program is far more
scholarly (and hence more dry and less appealing to young viewers), but his discussions
are more intellectual and less incendiary than those of Bill Nye. Nye’s show is showmanship over
substance. They gave very little in the way
of scholarly discussion of mechanisms and methods, but they gave recipes to
perform wiz-bang experiments at home.
While careful to encourage safety, the things they did were NOT things
you’d do at home with the very clever disclaimer “Don’t try this at home” which
of course always works… I think the
attachment to Nye is nostalgic and emotional, since there’s no math, no
background, no homework, and no scholarship.
People who like his show probably fit into the category of people who
thought that Adam Sandler and American Pie were great but who might cringe to
rewatch those movies today. It was a
pleasant part of childhood, before science meant WORK and only meant entropy. They like Nye because of an emotional
attachment to fond memories of yesteryear.
Both of these presenters are narrators and just that. Whereas Bill Nye, who has a BS in Mechanical
Engineering, professes and allows you to think that he’s a “science guy”, Mike
Rowe makes no pretense at being anything more than a narrator. These men both know far less about science
than I do, but the people who produce the show have scientific consultants who
help them prepare programs. Once
written, the episodes are read from a teleprompter like most television
programs and scripted like every movie.
It’s not like these men extemporaneously address the audience based on
years of experience and the expertise accompanying credentialed degrees. I mean, it’s like having Leonard Nemoy
narrate who, although I’m sure very knowledgeable, only PRETENDED to be a
science officer in Star Trek, which apparently keeps very few from assuming
that Nemoy actually is a scientific expert.
I have never heard Nye discuss his actual credentials; in contrast, he
is proud of his self-anointed status as the “science guy” and portends and
pretends to scientific expertise that his resume and transcripts fail to
substantiate. He bandies about the internet, interpolating
himself into scientific discussions, allowing himself to be interviewed as if
he’s some sort of scientific expert.
Mike Rowe? Not so much. In fact,
I think Rowe would rather be out cleaning a sewer than pretending to be an
expert on topics he knows little about.
Unlike Nye, who is nothing more than a rawgabbit, Rowe comes to the
table and reads his prompts and then goes back to his real area of subject
matter expertise without trying to hoodwink his audience. Nye is a pseudoscientific quack, an
ultracrepidarian, who shouts down anyone who disagrees with him and argues by
words without knowledge (Job 38:2).
The attitude of both men tells me a great deal about the
value of their programming. Whereas Bill
Nye continues to insist that everything he personally advocates but on which he
has no more credentials than you is scientific law, Mike Rowe will address and
admit to errors in scientific studies and conclusions. Nye’s word is gospel; Rowe’s word is
inquisitive. Nye declares himself
correct; Rowe is open to the notion that he might be wrong. Usually people who are absolutely certain of
a thing are wrong. The fool is an expert
in all things except for his own folly.
The scientific quack is the one who insists that he is correct; the real
scientist is one who finds out what truth really means. See, there are those foolish and naïve scientists
who believed in graduate school that scientists were as interested in the truth
as they want us to think they are, many of whom watch their grant funding
vanish and get kicked out of programs for publishing something that the
granting agency doesn’t want people to know.
Science, like everything else, is driven by money. Someone must pay for
the studies, and the studies don’t pay if scientists make the funders look like
cotton-headed ninnymuggins. So,
scientists lie too, pretend and portend to answers that get them more grants,
more papers, more accolades, ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of
the truth. The more validation they get,
the more they believe whatever tripe they preach, and they siphon more strength
from the throngs of people who don’t understand science but believe it anyway
while decrying everyone else as a denier, a moron, and a Puritan. However, in order for science to move
forward, you must keep an open mind. It’s
possible that you’re wrong, and in science it’s EXTREMELY COMMON. Then there’s Rowe, who, in his post, actually
cites examples. There are others, of
course, but you won’t hear Nye second guess himself or those whose research he
recites from rehearsed lines. Has Nye
done any original research? At least Rowe doesn’t even leave room for you to
think that he might have. Nye’s show
MADE MONEY, and that’s why it’s scientific Gospel to so many.
I don’t know how these men got appointed spokesmen for
science, and I don’t know why some people insist on declaring Nye to be a
subject matter expert. I don’t know that
I agree with either one of them 100%, but Rowe’s address and programming is
much more intellectually stimulating and consistent with the principles of
scientific investigation I learned as an actual diploma certified scientist. I also found it somewhat offensive and
uncomfortable to watch Bill Nye, who was more like the dorkiest nerdiest of us
scientific aficionados, a stereotype incarnate, who appealed to the lowest of
interests- explosions. Nye continues to
tout himself as a “science guy” while Rowe admits he’s nothing but a hired
narrator, however good at it he might be (at least in terms of this
program). Why is it never in the
discussion what their credentials are, what their agendas are, and what
relationship their programs hold to true science? I mean, when we do the Science gala on campus
each April, the lead chemistry faculty refers to it as the “science magic show”
and that irks me, because it leaves impressionable minds with the notion that
science is magical and easy. It’s math
intensive, and it’s actually pretty boring, redundant, and formulaic (pardon
the pun). Science isn’t just the study
of work, it’s a study that takes a lot of work, a lot more than simply reading
lines written by someone else and then pretending those are your original
thoughts. That’s not scholarship; that’s
plagiarism.
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