Neil deGrasse Tyson had some choice words for rapper B.o.B on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore last week, and framed his argument as part of a larger, more insidious problem: The growing anti-science movement and placing personal truths over objective fact is putting our democracy in jeopardy.
Earlier in the week, B.o.B had taken to Twitter to express his views on Earth's shape.
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After a twitter war involving diss tracks and conspiracy theories, Tyson appeared on the Nightly Show to tell B.o.B. off for good. He also described in a passionate rant how these kinds of beliefs are a symptom of a larger problem.
"There's a growing anti-intellectual strain in this country that may be the beginning of the end of our informed democracy," he said during the bit.
While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, Tyson said, that entitlement does not extend to public figures:
"If you think the world is flat, and you have influence over others, as would successful rappers, or even presidential candidates, then being wrong becomes being harmful to the health, the wealth, and the security of our citizenry."
Tyson has been outspoken on the important difference between objective fact and personal beliefs and there's a central truth to his views on objectivity: science, when done correctly, has no bias. Objective truths are determined through years of rigorous research, followed by equally vigorous peer review. Personal beliefs are not.
In an interview with Think Progress last year, Tyson point out the insanity of debating established science. "If you're more charismatic than I am or have better word use, or are more articulate, then you'll win the debate, and that means you'll be right and I'll be wrong," he said. But... "this is not how [science] works."
And using science to support an agenda rather than presenting the truth has dangerous consequences.
"If you cherry-pick scientific truths to serve cultural, economic, religious or political objectives," Tyson wrote in HuffPost Science, "you undermine the foundations of an informed democracy."
But this is not just a warning for politicians. In a response to The New York Times' "If I were president..." series, Tyson made it clear that an informed democracy can only work when its citizens are informed.
"One objective reality is that our government doesn't work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place."
Watch the entire clip from "The Nightly Show" with Larry Wilmore, here:
