kind of background checks, what kinds of guns people are allowed to have. i believe that s where the majority of american people, are we have to be safe from this madness. you know congressman, what do you tell people who are watching, who maybe have called their lawmakers, that have called for some kind of gun reform, but maybe at this point they feel like it s a lost cause. for example, you had the sheriff in the press conference this afternoon, and he was asked about the gun violence epidemic. and he essentially said, that this was a sick person this person didn t have any criminal record, and so was by all accounts in possession legally of those weapons. what do you tell people who are watching, who just feel exasperated right now? i think that sheriff gave a cop out answer. he would be right, if that were the only incident all year, it s a random incident. but we ve had tons and tons of incidences, not all of them random, where people spewing hate, hate ideology like the
like an easy sort of cop out answer, and it has to do with how science is taught in the schools. it s currently taught as a body of information, a satchel of facts that are imparted upon you and the you regurgitate that for an exam. that s an aspect of science, but it s not the most important part of science. the most important part of science is knowing how to question things and knowing when an answer has emerged that represents, sort of, an objective truth about this world. and if you think science is just that one research paper that reports the one result that you either like or don t like, no, that s not how science works. it s notjust a block of facts. it s not a block of facts nor is it any one research paper. if you have a brilliant idea and you test it and it unearths
the most important part of science is knowing how to question things and knowing when an answer has emerged that represents, sort of, an objective truth about this world. and if you think science is just that one research paper that reports the one result that you either like or don t like, no, that s not how science works. it s notjust a block of facts. it s not a block of facts nor is it any one research paper. if you have a brilliant idea and you test it and it unearths so much of what has been known before, we re going to double check that, the rest of us, did his cross his t s and dot his i s? let us check the power that s driving his experiment, you know, the wall current, let me check how that was conceived and done. and if no one can duplicate your results, it s not a result. but at the time you came
starsystems, planets, and possibly conditions for life as we know it. or, even better yet, life as we don t know it. but we sort of know one of the fundamentals, i mean, the national academy of sciences recent report on what is coming up next, over the next decade in space exploration. by the way, we do that each decade, it is one of the things we are proudest of. it s called a decadal survey. i know. we get together and we say, let s prioritise ten years of money. i know. and here s what they lay out for this one. they say, the coming decades will set humanity down a path to determine whether we are alone. yes, we re going to get an answer in the sense that. i don t know if we re alone, but in every way we can imagine we re not alone, we re going to perform experiments to test it. and that s what s going to unfold over the next years. and it seems to be. on mars and on the icy moons ofjupiter, where beneath it s kept warm from stress
neil degrasse tyson, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. your dayjob is being an astrophysicist, but you are also one of america s leading champions for science. so you tell me why there appears to be such a strain of scepticism among so many americans toward the basics of scientific knowledge. i don t have a good answer for that and i poked around in the ether for what could be behind it and i m going to give what sounds like an easy sort of cop out answer, and it has to do with how science is taught in the schools. it s currently taught as a body of information,