i am pleased, nay, outright tickled, to present this gatodunk award to “steak-umm" (yes, the real snack food account) for this truly epic clown dunk of neil degrasse tyson et al who, while he may be a smartish guy, has a real penchant for trite, self-aggrandizing public utterances. he stepped out of the lane on this one, and steak-umm drove hard to the hoop and smashed it home:

the set up was simple enough:

but then it really got good when an NDT teammate tried to wade and and rescue him:

because, as we all know, dunking on a pedant by being pedantic about their pedantry is a glory like flight and wins one a place in valhalla. taking this all the way down to the bare wood of theories of knowledge is just the sort of extra flourish that wins awards.

say it after me: “the science is NEVER settled and never “true".” it’s the best current set of hypotheses: always under attack, always subject to change, and never completed. skepticism IS science and data around prediction is how we judge it. not dogma. not ideology. and certainly not trite soundbites and appeals to authority. epistemology forms the integument of science. it is the wall that separates it from superstition.

it may seem like a small thing, but it’s not. it is THE thing. NDT speaks to and reaches a lot of kids with aspirations toward science. they look up to him. it would behoove him to make a better effort to communicate accurately to them the basic fundaments of the field and the philosophy.