Another day, another instance in which Sarah Palin picks a fight that she’s out of her depth in. On Thursday, she claimed that “Bill Nye is as much a scientist as I am,” after he criticized her new film Climate Hustle for being “unscientific propaganda.” Now this Uproxx video examines whether her claim is really true.
The video starts off with Palin’s infamous remarks as vice presidential candidate about her foreign policy credentials, because she governed a state from where “you can actually see Russia,” then into a clip of Bill Nye explaining the concept of “magnetism” (nostalgia!) on Bill Nye The Science Guy. Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in communications, after transferring to five different colleges. Bill Nye graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from an obscure school called Cornell University.
After college, Nye became an aeronautical engineer for Boeing, before becoming a host of several science shows that demystify the subject for us lay people. While at Boeing, Nye developed something called the “hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor” for the 747, and also made a sundial for the Mars Rover.
What has Palin done? She was a news anchor, served less than one term as governor of Alaska, and has struggled to explain the concept of trade on CBS Evening News.
It sure is hard to tell which one of them makes the better scientist.