Disagreeing with Neil deGrasse Tyson

and some spoilers for Interstellar

In #articles

I was reading a list of things Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't understand about Interstellar and was reminded about some of the things I don't like about Neil deGrasse Tyson. Let me start positive, however. I really love Cosmos, and feel that Tyson is well cast as the narrator (although I will always be partial to Carl Sagan). I find, however, that Neil deGrasse Tyson commonly makes glib statements that sound smart at first but then when you think about them they aren't as profound. One such example is his list of 9 things that he doesn't understand about the movie Interstellar (serious spoilers below). Most, if not all, of them have ready answers but are presented in a glib manner. Here is the list:

  1. If you can poke through a tesseract and touch books, why not just write a note and pass it through.
  2. Stars vastly outnumber Black Holes. Why is the best Earthlike planet one that orbits a Black Hole
  3. Who in the universe would ever know the titles of all their books, from behind, on an bookshelf.
  4. How a pickup truck can drive with a flat tire among densely planted corn stalks taller than it.
  5. If wormholes exist among our planets, then why can't one open up near Earth instead of Saturn.
  6. Gotta tell you. Mars (right next door) looks waay safer than those new planets they travelled to.
  7. If you crack your space helmet yet keep fighting, the Planet's air can't be all that bad for you.
  8. Can't imagine a future where escaping Earth via wormhole is a better plan than just fixing Earth.
  9. In this unreal future, they teach unscientific things in science class. Oh, wait. That is real.

Take (1), for example. If you watch the scene you'll notice that a) Cooper doesn't have any paper in the scene and b) he's in a space suit - a little challenging to write on paper, even if he had it. Seriously? Then there is (3), which is factually incorrect - he doesn't know the titles, he's punches out Morse code (backwards, of course) so that the book and spaces show the dots and dashes. Even if he needed the titles, there is a famous scene described in Gleick's book Genius where Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger at a party both rattle off from memory the encyclopedia titles of their child-hood encyclopedia set, so that isn't completely ridiculous.

On points (2), (5) and (6) - the humans had no choice in the placement of the wormhole - there could very well be a good reason for its placement - or the placement of the types of planets. In fact, if you understand the narrative, the future humans need to lead Cooper over to a black hole in order to communicate the info to the daughter. In (6), it's clear that the astronauts think these planets might be more habitable than Mars - it's only after they get there that they realize that doesn't work. In (7) is it not possible to partially crack a helmet and still remain air-tight? Is (8) even serious? Can you not imagine messing up an environent to the point where it is better to leave than to stay behind?

So we're left with (4), the problem of driving a truck fast with a flat tire. Not exactly a terrible science problem, as I see it.

The issue I have is that these are communicated (usally over twitter) as if they are clever, slam-dunk, obvious issues when a cursory glance at them shows otherwise. This is an educational criticism, and I expect better of science educators.