It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of Bill Nye. He debates Ken Ham, he goes after GMO foods (apparently he will retract that opinion soon), and I dislike what I see as his grasping ambition to retain the fame he had as “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” I’ve also said that I never watched that show, so he could have been fine then—everyone seems to have liked The Science Guy. But I haven’t been keen on his post-“Science-Guy” activities, and here’s one of them: a video in which he uses emojis to teach evolution. To me, it’s a miserable failure.
If kids get anything out of this video, I’d be surprised if it’s anything more than the fact that the earth is old. Natural selection is very poorly explained; common ancestry is omitted, and the origin of life is discussed badly. Perhaps readers or their kids can find merit in this, but I don’t. The emojis don’t seem to add anything. He is in fact talking down to the audience. But perhaps you’ll disagree.
Here’s the explanation from Mashable:
. . . it’s clear that kids these days speak a whole different language, what with their Google-y Docs and Tinder snaps.
In an effort to save them, we asked Bill Nye to break down the basic concepts of evolutionusing only emoji. You’re welcome, Generation Z.
Nye took part in General Electric’s #EmojiScience. From Dec. 10 – 12, participants snapped an emoji to “@GeneralElectric” with the hashtag #EmojiScience to receive a video response of a science experiment.
Click on the screenshot to go to the video:
h/t: Miss May
If he did, indeed, have too many jello shots before the camera started rolling, I could excuse that video…but not the posting of it in the presumed sobriety of the next day.
I’d expect that level of confused quasi-understanding from a kid who’s just starting to learn about it and who’s stringing together half-remembered factoids. For the “science guy” to publish an on-camera performance that bad…is inexcusable.
Hell, I could do better….
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I think Bill’s just doing his best to connect to people. I don’t care much for hero worship myself but being a recognized celebrity does help one make that connection. And Science Guy was a great show. It was like Mr. Wizard but with an energetic and a tad wacky host, which is something I appreciated as a kid. (I liked and watched both shows.)
There are several amusing video montages called Mr. Wizard’s a Dick, edited to make him come across as a real, well, dick. Quite funny, worth a watch.
as for Nye, I do wish he’d stick to engineering and basic science education. Perhaps with some more help he’ll evolve into a better evolution educator for the general public.
He’s doing what he wants to do and it’s what he cares about. You can be cynical about it and guess like this blog post that he’s just doing it for fame and maybe that’s true. No one is perfect and he may stumble from time to time, but at least he’s doing something. We definitely need scientists to be politically active.
Some general advice: Don’t ever tell a scientist to “stick to the science” unless you want them to roll their eyes and probably dislike you. It makes it sound like they’re not allowed to have opinions or do anything but entertain us with cute little science antics.
Unlike most people on this site, I’m actually a fan of Nye. However, he screws up explaining evolution a lot, not just in this emoji video, but more recently in a live Startalk radio program. So, here’s a word of advice for you, when someone screws up, even a scientist or an engineer, you call them out. Science hasn’t gotten anywhere by saying, “oh, that’s ok, he’s doing what he wants to do”. Tough crap. He screwed up, we call him out, get over it. He should either correct himself, get someone else who can explain it correctly, or he should shut the hell up.
I’ll remember that if I ever happen to be the only person available to point out something wrong. As it is, there isn’t any slack left for me to pick up. Plus, Bill doesn’t follow me on Twitter. My messages won’t make it to him. ;\
I like Nye, but that video is just terrible. It obscures more than it explains.
I think the potholer54 videos are much better. eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w57_P9DZJ4
His videos are great quality! Not the usual amateur youtube stuff.
Potholer54 is fantastic, funny and erudite. Nye, sadly, not so much.
Totally agree on potholer54. His climate change videos are brilliant.
Agreed. I have great respect for his series.
One of the few video’s I’ve mirrored on my youtube channel, with potholers’s permission of course.
I’m a big fan of potholer54! Sadly he doesn’t post video’s very often. I actually learned a lot from them.
I actually overheard some students a few weeks ago complaining that they used to like Bill Nye but they didn’t like his preaching on evolution. I couldn’t hear much of their conversation, but I got the impression that they were evolution skeptics.
That seems to imply that the Science Guy was avoiding a pretty monumental scientific theory.
Whew, that was just bad. Not sure that anyone would even know what he is talking about if he didn’t say the word, evolution. Whatever an emoji is — get rid of it.
That one clearly hurts the cause of education. There was quite simply nothing to latch onto, and plenty of visual and audio distractions. If something is done right, an audience member should be able to state one or two relevant points right away. There’s a teeny bit about stasis there, but nothing to ground the concept. Just lab benches and bubbling flasks of colored liquid. It’s as if the overall message is just “trust us, you’ll never understand this shit.”
Stasis? You must already be a science person! I didn’t hear anything about stasis.
I think Nye has done good stuff and bad stuff, and this is really bad stuff. Also, using emoji for the sake of themselves to try to connect to kids doesn’t work – they suss you out immediately.
This would not help anyone trying to learn about evolution. If you want to know how make your stuff interesting for kids, ask them. One of the good things about kids these days is they aren’t too scared to tell you. Whoever made this assumed, and you know what they say about ass u me.
Yeah, pretty weak. Was natural selection mentioned at all? I must’ve missed it.
I’m in my 30’s and watched his show while I was a kid with fond remembrance.
I present a hypothesis, maybe he doesn’t have a good hobby to keep him occupied in his retirement and so he is getting involved in public media out of boredom. In grad school I regularly worked with a retired engineer who volunteered at the university as something to do in retirement. It was also because his wife didn’t want him sitting around the house in his pajamas all day reading, which was apparently how he spent his first month of retirement.
Although I am also in my 30s, I first heard of him only 3–4 (?) years ago. He seemed vaguely engaging at first, but I find him increasingly ‘off’. I suspect you’re right: boredom & aimlessness are likely taking a toll.
Nye is not retired. He’s CEO of The Planetary Society, a 40,000-member space science advocacy organization founded by Carl Sagan. In that capacity he has quite a bit of visibility and influence with science policy makers, which is why the charge of grasping for the limelight doesn’t really ring true for me.
I was not aware of this. Thank you!
hmm… Perhaps he’s just experimenting with different approaches then.
Nye’s non-explanation of evolution in the emoji video resembles Ken Ham’s straw person description of it.
“It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of Bill Nye. He debates Ken Ham, he goes after GMO foods (apparently he will retract that opinion soon)”
I hope that he won’t go from one extreme to another on the GMO issue…
“Widely Used Herbicide Linked to Cancer”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-cancer/
The consensus of experts is that glyphosate is safe and does not cause cancer.
The IARC report was prepared after a one week consideration of the evidence to date. It disregarded the evidence that showed that glyphosate does not cause cancer and looked only at studies that seemed to show a link, some of which have been discredited (eg Seralini).
Other organisations have spent years reseaching the safety of glyposate and all of them without exception have concluded that glyphosate is safe and does not cause cancer.
The European Crop Protection Agency Director General had this to say:
“The IARC conclusions published in Lancet Oncology contradict the world’s most robust and stringent regulatory systems – namely the European Union and the United States – in which crop protection products have undergone extensive reviews based on multi-year testing and in which active ingredients such as glyphosate and malathion been found not to present a carcinogenic risk to humans.
From the summary conclusions it appears that IARC has made its conclusions as a result of an incomplete data review that has omitted key evidence”
>It disregarded the evidence that showed that glyphosate does not cause cancer
Kathryn Guyton, a senior toxicologist at the IARC, gave a clear reason why they decided to “disregard” some studies showing no link between glyphosate and cancer:
“But Guyton strongly defends the IARC process and insists that there is a set of clear rules that lays out which studies can be considered by the experts convened by the IARC. These are broadly limited to peer-reviewed publications and government reports, leading to the rejection of a number of industry-submitted studies.”
Here is another quote from Kathryn Glyton:
“I don’t think home use is the issue. It’s agricultural use that will have the biggest impact. For the moment, it’s just something for people to be conscious of”
Just something for people to be conscious of when actually using glyphosate, like wearing protective clothing while spraying it on crops. In other words, business as usual.
Another quote:
“In conclusion of this re-evaluation process of the active substance glyphosate by BfR the available data do not show carcinogenic or mutagenic properties of glyphosate”
(From the German Risk Agency, whose evaluation has been underway since 2012)
“Just something for people to be conscious of when actually using glyphosate, like wearing protective clothing while spraying it on crops. In other words, business as usual.”
The Nature article (reproduced by SciAm) points out that the IARC classification of the herbicide as ‘probably carcinogenic’ wasn’t due to the risk it poses for the farmers:
“But other evidence, including from animal studies, led the IARC to its ‘probably carcinogenic’ classification. Glyphosate has been linked to tumours in mice and rats — and there is also what the IARC classifies as ‘mechanistic evidence’, such as DNA damage to human cells from exposure to glyphosate.”
That was the discredited Seralini paper I mentioned.
As I also mentioned, the IARC did a one week evaluation of the evidence before coming to its conclusion. The other agencies i have quoted have ongoing studies for several years now.
I think you need to stop “cherry-picking” and look at al, the reports that have come out. You will find the IARC report is a rank outsider.
It may interest you to know that they have previously put the following in the same category as glyphosate: manufacturing glass, burning wood, emissions from high temperature frying, and work exposure as a hairdresser.
And, finally, another quote, this time from the EPA:
“The U.S. EPA classified glyphosate as Group E, evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans. The U.S. EPA does not consider glyphosate to be a human carcinogen based on studies of laboratory animals that did not produce compelling evidence of carcinogenicity”
That last sentence is a reference to your Seralini study.
I challenge you to find any organisation that supports what the IARC said about glyphosate. You will not find one.
Scientifik,
Here’s a link to criticism of the “fatally flawed” Seralini study “which claimed to show that GMO corn causes cancer in laboratory rats” and which has been “retracted by Elsevier”:
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-seralini-gmo-study-retraction-and-response-to-critics/
Sorry, all my comments are going into moderation before being posted, so there’s going to be a delay with each reply. I strayed into incivility in one of my posts (which I’m trying hard to avoid here).
Are you sure they are only talking about Seralini’s study in there? Take note the IARC points to evidence in both rats and mice, while Seralini used only rats in his study, as far as I know.
Speaking of Seralini’s study, keep in mind that it was later republished in Springer’s Open Journal Environmental Sciences Europe.
“Now the study has been republished by Environmental Sciences Europe. The republished version contains extra material addressing criticisms of the original publication. The raw data underlying the study’s findings are also published – unlike the raw data for the industry studies that underlie regulatory approvals of Roundup, which are kept secret. However, the new paper presents the same results as before and the conclusions are unchanged.”
http://www.gmoseralini.org/republication-seralini-study-science-speaks/
The below discussion gives further background on the story of its earlier retraction.
“HANSEN: The main criticism was that the number of rats that they tested per group, ten rats, was too small for a cancer study, that you should at least be using 50 rats and they said that the strain of rat that was used, Sprague-Dawley rats, are prone to tumors. So those were the two main criticisms, and neither of them are really valid.
CURWOOD: Why do you say neither of those criticisms are valid?
HANSEN: Well, basically what Dr. Séralini did was he did the same feeding study that Monsanto did and published in the same journal eight years prior, and in that study, they used the same number of rats, and the same strain of rats, and came to a conclusion there was no problem. So all of a sudden, eight years later, when somebody does that same experiment, only runs it for two years rather than just 90 days, and their data suggests there are problems, that all of a sudden the number of rats is too small? Well, if it’s too small to show that there’s a problem, wouldn’t it be too small to show there’s no problem? They already said there should be a larger study, and it turns out the European Commission is spending 3 million Euros to actually do that Séralini study again, run it for two years, use 50 or more rats and look at the carcinogenicity. So they’re actually going to do the full-blown cancer study, which suggests that Séralini’s work was important, because you wouldn’t follow it up with a 3 million Euro study if it was a completely worthless study.”
http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=13-P13-00049&segmentID=2
You are not addressing my substantial criticisms, which is telling. Have you found any other organisation that has come to the same conclusion as IARC? Just one will do. I know I’m asking the impossible but that’s my point. Nobody agrees with them. They are an outlier, even if you don’t exaggerate what they’re saying.
So what you’re doing is highlighting the conclusion of a single organisation, exaggerating it, ignoring all the rest that conclude glyphosate is safe, and spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I assume you are not intentionally doing this, but that is the effect.
Enough of this please.
Yes, I have heard a bit about these new findings. At present I am not sure what to think, but clearly the issue is more complicated than what it seemed to be just a couple years ago. Right now I am on the fence, watching to see a consensus one way or the other.
There is certainly more to it all the way round. Other herbicides are probably bad for you as well. Having nothing to do with GMO. Things like 2-4D or 2-4-5T. I am more concerned about the insecticides that may be killing the bees.
Now they have super weeds that Roundup cannot kill. But things are looking up. After California dries up and they can no longer supply the rest of us with all the crops, we may have to stop growing nothing but corn and beans here in Iowa and start growing things we can eat.
“There is certainly more to it all the way round. Other herbicides are probably bad for you as well. Having nothing to do with GMO.”
New multiple herbicide-resistant GMO crops may lead to increases in herbicide use, so the two issues are not completely unrelated:
“The industry’s response has focused on making crops withstand more herbicides: first Dow’s Enlist corn and soybean varieties, designed for spraying with both glyphosate and the 2,4-D herbicide, which were federally approved last fall, and now Monsanto’s Xtend cotton and soybeans.”
“Monsanto expects Xtend will eventually account for half of all US cotton planting and 40 percent of soybeans. Dicamba application would increase 14-fold on cotton in comparison to current use rates, and 88-fold on soybeans. For the latter crop, Freese estimates that farmers will use an additional 20 million pounds of herbicides every year.”
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/new-gmo-crop-controversy/
Use of any herbicide needs to be weighed up against the history of use on site, over use of any herbicide leads to resistance which is why careful accounting is needed. This allows a farmer to select either a new chemical or an older one that hasn’t been used for a number of years. You can also assess risk of a certain weed a seek out a bio control agent, in fact this is becoming the common approach for insects that attack plants.
What we know for sure is that today, farming in the upper Midwest is a two trick pony (Field Corn and Soybeans) and for several years now the Big seed & chemical companies pretty much run the show.
I did a little farming many years ago before all of this happened to farming here because farming was in the family. I am also very glad I did not stay in it and moved on to other things.
An interesting piece of news just the other day concerned one of the large franchise food places, I can’t remember the name. Anyway, they had made a stand some time back that they would not buy pork except the pork that had been raised in more open space operations and the animals could get outdoors on actual ground once in a while. They have now had to stop selling items on their menu because they cannot find enough pork anywhere based on their standards.
Mark,
“I have heard a bit about these new findings”
There are no new findings.
It’s the IARC’s flawed analysis of the evidence. Without exception, all other organisations have concluded that glyposate is safe and non-carcinogenic.
“At present I am not sure what to think”
That’s exactly what the anti-GMO propagandists hope to achieve: to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt. That’s all they need to do to win.
“clearly the issue is more complicated than what it seemed to be just a couple years ago”
Nothing has changed except the IARC’s flawed assessment of the evidence and the anti-GMO advocates misinterpreting and misrepresenting what the IARC actually said.
“Right now I am on the fence, watching to see a consensus one way or the other”
The consensus of experts is that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic. Please do not be fooled by the anti-GMO propaganda.
“That’s exactly what the anti-GMO propagandists hope to achieve: to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt. That’s all they need to do to win.”
Oh, I’m sure that is precisely the aim and mission of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC): to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
You misunderstood what I said. It’s the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of what IARC said, and the cherry-picking involved in highlighting what they said without mentioning that every other organisation has concluded that glyphosate is safe, that is spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. In other words, exactly what you’re doing here.
Hypothesizing that GMO produce is safe, buying it is supporting systems in which workers are exposed to these chemicals, in its production, transport/storage, and spplication. Therefore, the onus is on the “pro” GMO side of the argument to show that these risks are worth the dubious gains. This leaves aside any environmental harms from both the chemicals themselves and the agricultural methods they support. Restricting the issue to how consumers are effected is almost besides the point.
What “chemicals”?
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I’m not a fan of cutesy, gimmicky ways of explaining things and I always find it insulting so this I do not like. However, I suspect I’m in the minority given the proliferation of beginners books that use just this approach.
Count me in that minority!
Even when I was a kid I hated that…
I wish that he would act as a science education facilitator instead of trying to do and know everything, and fail at it. Why can he not just act as the host of a show, introduce an actual evolutionary biologist or whatever the topic may be, and engage in a proper interview, acting in place of the average person, to elicit better explanations of the topic? It seems to me he could do a world of good in this way, as he’s a household name, without stumbling over himself trying to do it himself. That’s my two cents anyway. and for f*cks sake, I wish he’d stop with his tired “my old boss” and other jokes whenever he’s in front of a microphone. He can be amusing, he can be entertaining, he can be educational, but too often lately, he’s just being annoying.
Pointless.
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I think Bill needs to spend less time talking and more time reading.
“… molecules just happened…”
“… somehow, probably …”
“…accidentally found ways…”
Given the level of science skepticism within his target audience, the foregoing strike me as remarkably unwise rhetorical choices. (I do recognize that Nye was probably aiming for ‘casual & approachable’; unfortunately, the end result is closer to ‘flimsy & specious’).
Well, I like Bill Nye, always have. I was concerned when I heard about his debate with Ham, but I think it ended up okay in the end. I was also concerned about his GMO comments but it seems he is re-evaluating so that’s good. The video definitely won’t be winning any awards and is not a great moment in the history of education, but it isn’t that awful. It might even cause a few kids to ask questions. If I was trying to educate a child in evolution, I might show that for fun but obviously it would have to be followed up by something better. I don’t really have a problem with it. It is what it is.
Three tries and I can’t get past the ad about “my daughter’s” college education cost. Judging from comments above, perhaps it’s just as well.
“Mashable . . . Kids growing up in the ’90s . . . had to use words. WORDS . . . kids these days speak a whole different language . . . Google-y Docs and Tinder snaps. In an effort to save them, we asked Bill Nye to break down the basic concepts of evolution using only emoji . . . Nye took part in General Electric’s #EmojiScience . . . .”
This emoji bells-and-whistles infotainment stuff is for the sparrows. It strikes me that GE is also worthy of a critique for involving themselves with it. What’s in it for them? Just cuz it’s putatively a “cool” thing to do? I wonder how other emoji presentations compared with Nye’s. Apparently GE suits don’t think humans can much bear reading and listening to words.
Also, Nye had two minutes max to do it. No emoji was viewable for more than a few seconds to allow one to evaluate its meaning, assuming one can tolerate emojis in the first place. While “natural selection” was not mentioned, neither were other typically used terms, like “genetic drift.” Can one give a satisfactory description of natural selection, reasonably understandable to a non-evolutionary scientist, of any age, in two minutes, by whatever means?
I gather that GE asked – and paid – Nye to do it, and imposed that human attention-deficit emoji constraint on him. I wonder if he held his nose (one could never admit to that attitude without negative consequence) and did it so as to optimize the chance that other, less unpalatable, opportunities might (to the extent they could) present themselves as a result.
Is his use of the word “probably” all that objectionable, considering that “provisional” is a word frequently used to describe the process/findings of science, making no claims beyond what the evidence reasonably warrants?
I admit that Nye’s live stage presentation style occasionally grates on me. The Science Guy came off much better, what with its rehearsed script and retakes. I guess I’m spoiled by that apotheosis and zenith of extemporaneity, The Hitch.
I almost always agree with Jerry’s critiques. I find this one a bit unfair and overly critical.
He’s clearly posing as The Science Guy.
His Science Guy show was quite good. I used to watch it once in a great while when I lived in Seattle (he is/was a Seattle guy; started in comedy).
He was an energetic and interesting host for a kids’ show.
I can’t watch TV anymore, because it’s all clearly pitched at people with attention spans of a few milliseconds, and I can’t stand how spastic it is. Even the morning “news” programs (such as they exist, it’s mostly a bunch of pretty airheads (male and female) laughing moronically over some local event or fashion or restaurant or something — just a chat show. Walter Cronkite is spinning in his grave) is barely watchable for 20 minutes.
“…(he is/was a Seattle guy; started in comedy).”
We used to enjoy him on that Seattle comedy show which was called “Almost Live” and aired right after SNL. He did a a wacky sketch about a superhero speed walker that was pretty funny.