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These Scientists Disavowed Bill Nye For Accepting An Invite To Trump’s SOTU Address

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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What started as environmentalists pressuring Bill Nye “the Science Guy” not to attend the State of the Union address has turned into a wave of activist scientists disavowing the former children’s TV show host.

Activists recently sent Nye two partitions with thousands of signatures asking him not to attend President Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday night as a guest of Oklahoma Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine, the nominee to head NASA.

Nye is CEO of the Planetary Society, which lobbies on behalf of NASA space programs. Now, activist scientists are trying to distance their community from the “Science Guy,” who they claim is tacitly approving Trump’s “racist” and “climate denial” agenda.

“Bill Nye does not speak for us or for the members of the scientific community who have to protect not only the integrity of their research, but also their basic right to do science,” reads a blog post from the liberal group 500 Women Scientists, published in Scientific American on Tuesday.

“We stand with others who have asked Bill Nye to not attend the State of the Union,” reads the blog, adding that “Nye’s complicity does not align him with the researchers who have a bold and progressive vision for the future of science and its role in society.”

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It was not long ago that Nye was championed by many activist scientists. Nye marched at the the front of the March For Science in April, walking alongside Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann.

Nye has long been the unofficial spokesman for the science community, due to his long tenure as the host of the kids show “Bill Nye The Science Guy.” He’s especially vocal in recent years about global warming. Nye famously suggested global warming skeptics will eventually “age out and die.”

Nye, however, is also an advocate for NASA space exploration programs, and now his advocacy has many in the science community disavowing him.

“But by attending the SOTU as Rep. Bridenstine’s guest,” 500 Women Scientists argued, “Nye has tacitly endorsed those very policies, and put his own personal brand over the interests of the scientific community at large.”

“As scientists, we cannot stand by while Nye lends our community’s credibility to a man who would undermine the United States’ most prominent science agency,” they argued. “And we cannot stand by while Nye uses his public persona as a science entertainer to support an administration that is expressly xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, ableist, and anti-science.”

However, Nye has not been deterred from attending Trump’s address.

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