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Neil degrasse tyson mic drop gif7/31/2023 Most of the people interviewed lamented the prospect that damaging allegations might take down the world’s most famous living scientist - and perhaps the most famous black scientist in history - beloved for eviscerating so many of the stereotypes of the stuffy, out-of-touch academic.īut for Watson and Allers, the tragedy was the loss of a different black scientist: Amet.įor years, Amet had been trying to make the world listen to her account of a powerful man who had once assaulted her and derailed her life. Dozens more from that time did not reply to requests for interviews. Over the course of nearly three years, BuzzFeed News has spoken with more than 30 people for this story, including the alleged victims and their families, Cosmos crew members, and graduate students and professors who were at UT Austin 30 years ago. In a 2014 email shared with BuzzFeed News, she described the incident to her own employer in order to shoot down a proposed collaboration with Tyson. Tyson, its most famous employee, drunkenly approached her, she said, making sexual jokes and propositioning her to join him alone in his office. In January 2010, she recalled, she joined her then-boyfriend at a holiday party for employees of the American Museum of Natural History. Now a fourth woman has told BuzzFeed News her experience of sexual harassment from Tyson. Tyson declined multiple requests to comment on this story.) Noting her “odd” interests in New Age healing, he suggested she had a “false memory.” (Watson, Allers, and Amet have disputed much of Tyson’s statement. He said they had been friends in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, and had been “intimate” on a few occasions. He also responded to Amet’s rape allegations, his only public acknowledgment of the claims in the four years since Amet first blogged about them. On Saturday, Tyson released a 1,600-word statement on Facebook, confirming many of the details of Watson’s and Allers’ allegations, and apologizing for what he deemed clumsy displays of affection that had been misunderstood. A spokesperson for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where Tyson has led the Hayden Planetarium for over 20 years, said that it has never received a complaint about him, but was also looking into the allegations. With three women now making allegations on the record, the Patheos article spread far and wide, prompting Fox Broadcasting Company, which produces the show, and National Geographic, which airs it, to announce an official investigation. The new story also described a third woman, Katelyn Allers, an astronomy and physics professor at Bucknell University, who said Tyson had grabbed her and reached down the front of her dress to look at her tattoo at a scientific meeting in 2009. On Thursday, Watson’s allegations were made public on a blog called Patheos, which had previously published Amet’s claims, twice. I just wanted to reach out say that I BELIEVE YOU about Neil deGrasse Tyson,” Watson wrote on Aug. Watson found her on Instagram and sent her a DM. The following day, she reported the incident and her resignation to a line producer, who suggested that Watson tell everyone she was leaving due to a “family emergency.” So she did.Īs she processed what happened over the next few months, her mind often went to the woman who claimed to have been raped, Tchiya Amet. She couldn’t stand the idea of working with him any longer. On the car drive home the next day, Watson said, he told her she was “too distracting” to ever make it as a producer. As she was leaving, he took her by the shoulders and said, “I want to hug you so bad right now, but I know that if I do, I’ll just want more.” She felt uncomfortable as he gazed into her eyes and held her wrist to feel her “spirit connection.” They spent two hours together, as he made sexual references to song lyrics and described his need for physical release. Tyson invited her up to his apartment to “unwind” over a bottle of wine, she recalled. She thought he was a charismatic and friendly guy - until the night of May 16, when she was driving him home after a long day. She met his mother, wife, and son when they came to visit, and he met her dad, sister, and fiancé. Tyson quickly promoted Watson to be his assistant. He was beloved by the crew, often having lunch with them, high-fiving everyone, and even putting on impromptu science demos. Over the next three months, she worked closely with Tyson, then 59, on the Cosmos set in Santa Fe.
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