During his final show for the network, MSNBC host Ronan Farrow brought on Bill Nye “The Science Guy” to discuss the groundbreaking recent discovery of a supermassive black hole… only to pivot and have his guest explain a viral image of a dress.
For the unitiated, a recently uploaded image of a dress has gone viral for appearing to be white and gold for about three-quarters of the population, but black and blue for the rest. Sides quickly formed, friendships were ruined, and #TheDress became the top trending hashtag on Twitter and Facebook alike.
“Let’s talk about something that’s not a worthy use of our intellects…” Farrow said. “You mentioned the x-ray spectrum and relationship between your observations about the black hole and your observations about — I hate to say it — The Dress.” (VIDEO: AWKWARD: Ronan Farrow Has No Idea Who His Guest Is)
“…I thought it was a hoax,” Nye admitted, “In order to resolve this for me, I’d have to see the actual dress in the actual studio. When you start putting it on monitors and you start using cameras and start using, for example, a very well-known home improvement store’s paint recognition color application, everybody is going to get the answer that maybe they want.”
Nye actually managed to use the dress discussion to wax philosophical about the scientific method. “It’s all science. This is to say, the role of the observer in science, that’s where the scientific method starts, you make an observation then you create — generally create a hypothesis, do an experiment and compare to what happened what you thought would happen, that’s based on your perception.”
“I’m an open-minded man,” he said, “The Dress has to be here in the studio, not on the camera…”
“What color do you think it is?” Farrow eventually asked.
“I’m not saying,” Nye teased.
