Neil deGrasse Tyson: Most guys are guilty (but there is at least one exception!)

“On Being Accused” is Neil deGrasse Tyson’s response to “Two More Women Accuse Neil deGrasse Tyson of Sexual Misconduct” (Patheos). The opening sentence:

For a variety of reasons, most justified, some unjustified, men accused of sexual impropriety in today’s “me-too” climate are presumed to be guilty by the court of public opinion.

If it is mostly justified to presume a man guilty, isn’t this accused guy saying that most men are in fact guilty?

Here’s a passage that seems not to have been written with the advice of an expert legal defense team:

Practically everyone she knows on set gets a daily welcome-hug from her. I expressly rejected each hug offered frequently during the Production. But in its place I offered a handshake, and on a few occasions, clumsily declared, “If I hug you I might just want more.” My intent was to express restrained but genuine affection.

Dr. Tyson relates an encounter with Elizabeth Warren:

I never touched her until I shook her hand upon departure. On that occasion, I had offered a special handshake, one I learned from a Native elder

Do not major in physics:

I entered astrophysics graduate school directly out of college in 1980. It’s a grueling adventure-marathon, and many people do not finish the PhD. In fact, it was not uncommon for half the admitted students to leave after two or three years, finding some other kind of work in their lives.

Regarding a survivor:

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.

Shouldn’t it be “tuning forks of color”?

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6 thoughts on “Neil deGrasse Tyson: Most guys are guilty (but there is at least one exception!)

  1. Neil Tyson taught at Princeton for a semester. He taught astronomy for non-majors. Students majoring in astronomy were explicitly advised that taking the course would confer them no credits toward graduation.

    Isaac Newton boasted of his virginity.

  2. Interesting how this comes up, every 30 years. Generation X had the Clarence Thomas & tailhook scandals. Then everyone went back to normal for 20 years. For someone who lived through 2 cycles, the hand shaking phases get ridiculous.

    The high failure rate of physics PhD’s made me feel better about dropping out of biology grad school. The financial disaster was looming. It was probably a wise decision to take some engineering classes with the last of the money & then eject.

  3. The “most justified” comment reminded me of Harvey and his attempt to deflect attention with something about gun control. Seems to me if you are accused of something you did not do you should stick to the facts, deny and move on — rather than raising irrelevancies (& here lots of details) that sound insincere.

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