“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, CNN interview (2011)
Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium and one of today’s most recognizable voices in science communication, made this statement during a 2011 CNN interview. As someone who has dedicated his career to making astrophysics accessible to millions through his work on Cosmos and countless public appearances, Tyson understands the challenge of communicating scientific findings in an era where facts often compete with opinion.
The quote captures something fundamental about the nature of scientific inquiry. Gravity pulls objects toward Earth whether we accept it or not. The speed of light remains constant regardless of our feelings about it. Tyson’s words speak to the objective reality that science seeks to describe, a reality that exists independent of human perception or preference.
This statement arrived at a time when scientific consensus on issues like climate change and evolution faced increasing public skepticism. Tyson wasn’t making a political argument but rather pointing to what distinguishes science from other ways of knowing: its results are testable, repeatable, and independent of who conducts the experiment.
The simplicity of his phrasing makes it memorable, yet beneath that simplicity lies a profound reminder about the relationship between truth and belief, between what we wish were true and what demonstrably is.
