Do quips and a bow tie make you a scientist?

TV host has been criticized for overstepping

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared at the University of Ottawa to talk Canadian innovation with Bill Nye the Science Guy, social media lit up with critiques that, in a country packed with scientists, Trudeau chose to talk science with an American TV personality.

But Nye rarely goes anywhere these days without someone bringing up his sparse scientific resume.

“We’ve all observed your ‘science guy’ persona, yet, you intentionally avoid telling people you’re playing a character,” a widely circulated critique posted to one of Nye’s Reddit AMAs says.

“You have allowed the illusion to persist for decades that you are an expert on science issues in the public eye.”

Unlike other celebrity science communicators like Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson, Nye has a limited scientific background. He has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, pursued standup comedy while working for Boeing and originally invented the bow-tied science guy persona as a comic bit.

“I’m a mechanical engineer. It’s physics — for four years, it’s physics. I took six semesters of calculus. Is that enough?” Nye said in a 2017 broadcast of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

However, it’s Nye’s often questionable relationship with empirical science that has prompted geeks to savage him and his Netflix series Bill Nye Saves the World.

The show’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a mere 26 per cent, with many critics arguing it eschewed legitimate scientific inquiry in favour of mean-spirited mockery of pseudo-scientific beliefs.

“Nye and I are on the same team — and yet I still felt like I was being talked down to throughout his show. How will the average viewer feel?” a Gizmodo review reads.

A particularly colourful Reddit subforum saw scientifically minded viewers lament the show for categorizing science as correct or incorrect, without explanation.

Some of these claims aren’t as widely accepted as Nye implies. The Science Guy used one show to hammer home that nuclear power is not a viable alternative to fossil fuels, a view some scientists would dispute.

The show is also notably deficient of any real scientists as hosts or correspondents, which prompted a swath of the American research community to politely tweet to Nye with reminders of what scientists look like.

Nye maintains many defenders in the scientific community, many of whom credit the Science Guy for inspiring their own careers. It’s not for nothing that Nye was picked as the honorary co-chairman for the March for Science.

But shows like Bill Nye Saves the World might do very little for the cause of gaining new recruits to the realm of rational empiricism. Research by a team of U.S. communication scientists recently found shows like Nye’s are only really seen by audiences “made up of people who are already highly educated, knowledgeable about science and receptive to scientific evidence.”

Meanwhile, there’s good reason to believe Nye’s position as the face of American science might be making science literacy worse.

In 2014, Nye flew to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., to debate evolution with creationist Ken Ham, an act roundly criticized for granting legitimacy to the wildly unscientific realm of young earth creationism.

And last year, Nye appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight to refute notions that climate change is a hoax. During the interview, Carlson tried to press Nye on whether some aspects of global warming were due to natural forces.

An experienced climate scientist could have responded with data demonstrating the documented rise in terrestrial heat, and tied it to human activity. Instead, an annoyed-looking Nye repeatedly deflected questions, saying the science was “settled” and explaining the basic premise of the greenhouse effect. The cringeworthy appearance is now a favoured clip among climate denialist circles.

Compare Nye to Paul Zaloom, the host of Beakman’s World, another 1990s children’s science TV show that premiered just before Bill Nye the Science Guy. Zaloom, who remains a touring actor and puppeteer, still appears as the titular character Beakman on occasion. Like Nye, he’s also approached by former viewers who say they became scientists because of his show.

But Zaloom has kept his shtick strictly to that of a comedian. He’ll answer an audience member’s questions about mosquito bites, but doesn’t don the Beakman suit to appear on cable news and attempt to influence public policy.

Mike Rowe, the former host of Dirty Jobs, has been compared to Nye by critics who argue Rowe is similarly an entertainer masquerading as a gritty working man. Rowe took umbrage with the comparison, arguing he hasn’t inhabited his TV persona quite as much as Nye.

“Unlike the Science Guy, I am not the skilled labour guy or the dirty jobs guy, nor am I a spokesman for blue-collar America,” Rowe wrote in a 2017 blog post.

He added: “I would never juxtapose myself with work in the same way Bill has juxtaposed himself with science.”

IT’S PHYSICS … I TOOK SIX SEMESTERS OF CALCULUS. IS THAT ENOUGH?