“Real Time” host Bill Maher lost his cool during an exchange with liberal scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson when the latter couldn’t bring himself to admit that, scientifically speaking, men have an advantage over women in sports.
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Maher and the famed astrophysicist engaged in a conversation regarding Laura Helmuth, the chief editor of Scientific American magazine. Helmuth was forced to resign after posting unhinged comments about supporters of President-elect Donald Trump on the liberal social media wasteland known as Bluesky.
The comments were less what you would expect from an actual scientific American and more what one would see out of your typical quintuple-vaccinated owner of 14 cats.
Helmuth referred to Trump’s supporters as “the meanest, dumbest, most bigoted” individuals while lamenting that her generation is “so full of f**king fascists.”
But that wasn’t Maher’s main problem. No, the more significant issue to him was an article in the magazine that stated, “inequity between male and female athletes” is “a result, not of inherent biological differences between the sexes, but of biases in how they are treated in sports.”
“That’s nuts,” Maher observed, adding that such ridiculous notions are “why the Democrats lost the election.”
Tyson laughed off the suggestion, accusing Maher of finding a reason the resistance party got shellacked in the elections “every 20 minutes.”
“First of all, you don’t watch this show, so you don’t know — It’s okay, but you talk as if you do, and you f**king don’t. That’s okay, just don’t bulls**t me,” Maher fired back. “That’s the one thing people can never do on this show is bulls**t me.”
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The comedian-turned-political pundit proceeded to urge Tyson to “engage with the idea here.”
“What I’m asking is Scientific American is saying basically that the reason why an NBA — WNBA team — can’t beat the Lakers is because of societal bias.”
Tyson refused to engage.
@billmaher loses his cool trying to get @neiltyson to admit a basic fact – that men have an advantage over women in sports. pic.twitter.com/T9FMh9WHwd
— Rusty (@Rusty_Weiss) November 24, 2024
“Why can’t you just say this is not scientific and Scientific American should do better?!” an exasperated Maher pressed.
Tyson pivoted, noting that Helmuth was out of a job. But Maher reminded him that her rant wasn’t what he was taking exception to — it was the magazine’s non-scientific bent on something so obvious to one’s own eyes.
“Well, I’m going to file you under ‘part of the problem,'” Maher quipped, prompting gasps and laughter from the crowd.
If you thought the comedian and the astrophysicist set off fireworks comparable to a supernova during that exchange, you should have seen them continue to argue during the show’s “Overtime” segment.
The exchange gets even more testy in another segment where Maher declares, “You’re not a doctor!”
“You’re the guy who doesn’t understand why the WNBA team can’t beat the Lakers.” pic.twitter.com/PHQXZQneR2
— Rusty (@Rusty_Weiss) November 24, 2024
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Tyson prodded Maher by discussing vaccines, which he claims the medical field is 99 percent unanimous on. That discussion broke down when the scientist asserted he wasn’t quite sure if Maher believed “science matters.”
“Sometimes you don’t sound that way. That’s what worries me!” he said.
Maher cut him down immediately, calling back to the “men in sports” debate: “Actually, you’re the guy who doesn’t understand why the WNBA team can’t beat the Lakers, so I don’t know, you’re supposed to be the scientist, and you couldn’t even admit that!”
“This is not your field; you’re not a doctor.”
It’s unclear if Tyson was able to identify the truck that just ran him over. Maher isn’t always right, but when it comes to extreme leftists pushing a woke, anti-women agenda, he definitely gets it.
Scientific American, by contrast, does not.
As our colleague Jennifer Oliver O’Connell wrote in 2021, Scientific American teamed up with Dr. Anthony Fauci to sow the seeds of doubt during the pandemic and put the final “nails in the coffin of Science.”
She points out that this was simply a continuation of “increasingly leftist and non-scientific bent over the last few decades.”
All of that came to a head when, just weeks before the presidential election, Scientific American claimed without evidence that Kamala Harris would bring a “lifelong familiarity with Science” to the White House.
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The entire premise was that because Harris’ mother was a scientist, she, too, must be compelled by science.
As the daughter of a cancer researcher, Kamala Harris would bring a lifelong familiarity with science to the presidency, experts say https://t.co/YOdjX6c7QA
— Scientific American (@sciam) July 26, 2024
Maher ended the exchange with Tyson by reminding him again that he is not a doctor and joking, “When I have a goiter on Uranus, I’ll call you.”
It was a joke meant to defuse the situation, but the tension was rather obvious.
