Move over, Dr. Anthony Fauci. There’s a new favorite scientist among D.C. Democrats, except this one’s not even really a scientist at all.
President Joe Biden just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to “Billy Nye, the science guy,” a former mechanical engineer-turned-TV personality-turned-liberal activist. The president awarded Nye the nation’s highest civilian honor for supposedly being a “beloved science educator for the nation … [who] inspires generations of Americans to follow facts and reason.”
This is absurd. It’s just the latest degradation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and perfectly embodies the politicization of science.
First and foremost, Nye, despite building a career off passing himself off as a scientific expert, is not even a scientist — at least, not in the way he claims to be. His only academic qualification is a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. That’s a sufficient credential to qualify him as an engineer, but not as a scientist, and he has essentially no qualifications whatsoever to establish himself as an expert in the subjects he has focused on in recent years, such as sexuality and gender, abortion, and climate change.
Of course, expertise or the lack thereof alone doesn’t make someone right or wrong. But when someone’s entire career is built upon a sort of deception by omission, that probably shouldn’t be rewarded with recognition from the Oval Office.
Yet the much bigger issue with Nye is not his credentials, but his actual work as a “science educator.” While his early work as a TV personality was much more neutral, scientific, and apolitical, in recent history, he has become an ideological activist who exploits science to pass off fringe progressive ideas as if they are neutral facts.
For example, Nye falsely claimed that biological sex is not binary, that we all exist “on a spectrum” and that determining an individual’s sex is “not clear cut.” This is objectively untrue on all counts.
The “science educator” also claimed that children as young as 3 or 4 years old can understand their true “gender identity,” an unscientific concept, and know they are transgender. This runs contrary to everything we know about the science of brain development and the reality that children that young lack a firm grasp on reality, let alone their innermost selves.
Nye has also dishonestly framed the complicated moral and ethical debate over abortion as one where “the science” proves the pro-choice position as somehow objectively the “correct” answer. No matter how one feels about the issue, this is a rankly partisan distortion of science, which can only inform us about the facts surrounding abortion — not answer complex ethical questions.
This is a real problem.
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Public trust in scientific institutions and expertise has declined in the United States, and this is happening, in part, because people quite rightly feel “science” has been ideologically hijacked and weaponized, whether during the pandemic against Americans’ liberties or in the cultural arena to promote far-left social values. The consequences of this collapse in trust could be catastrophic if people stop trusting life-saving childhood vaccinations or expert advice during the next societal crisis. And people such as Nye will be to blame.
Of course, Nye is not the only culprit behind the bastardization of science and its increasing distrust among the public, but he’s a high-profile one. The proper response to this damaging legacy is shame and condemnation, not presidential celebration.
Brad Polumbo is the host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
