Neil deGrasse Tyson Shares 17-Minute Video in Response to Terrence Howard's Claims in Joe Rogan Interview

Neil deGrasse Tyson, as perhaps should have been expected, has offered a thoughtful and quite detailed response to being named in Terrence Howard’s recent Joe Rogan interview.

As you may or may not recall, the Hustle & Flow and Empire actor had likened Tyson's notes on his math and physics-focused paper to an "attack," something with which Tyson vehemently disagrees. Instead, the StarTalk host says he simply gave Howard the exact treatment he and his colleagues would expect in such a situation.

According to Tyson, Howard did indeed send him a 36-page treatise about eight years ago, shortly after the two met at a TV networks event. The treatise in question, he added, sees Howard "attempting to reinvent mathematics and physics." Tyson recalled reading through all 36 pages, leaving his notes and thoughts along the way. Put another way, as Tyson explained, he wanted to treat Howard with the same respect he would give to someone in his field.

"I thought, out of respect for him, what I should do is give him my most informed critical analysis that I can," he said. "In my field, we call that a peer review." In short, Tyson added, this process sees those involved operating on "their duty to alert you of things about your ideas that are either misguided or wrong."

From there, Tyson walked viewers through the remarks he made on Howard’s treatise. In one example, he pointed to Howard’s statement that "it can never occur that the square root of a given number when added to itself is greater than the initial number squared," highlighting his in-paper comments about this opening thesis not being based in fact. Meanwhile, in a note left at the beginning of Howard’s document, Tyson stated this paper was "an ambitious work that is a clear indication of a restless, active mind" but one that nevertheless suffers from "assumptions and statements that are under-informed, misinformed, or simply false."

Elsewhere, Tyson continued to point out that Howard likening his remarks to an "attack" isn’t fair, as it’s what any would-be new idea must go through before being treated with any degree of seriousness.

"What else should I say? I’m a scientist," Tyson said. "That’s what I would tell a colleague, a colleague who’d then say, ‘Well, thank you’ and then we’d go out for a beer after. Because that’s how that works. And there’s an old saying, I first heard it from Micheal Dell of Dell Technologies: If one day you find yourself the smartest person in the room, change rooms."

Tyson, whose video response tops out at around 17 minutes, also made one particularly important thing clear, and it’s one that should be kept in mind in any discussions of this magnitude: "It’s not about feelings here. It’s about objective reality." In the closing moments of his video, available in full up top, Tyson spoke more generally about the importance of peer-reviewed work.

"The platform to be accepted for the ideas is not social media," Tyson cautioned. "It is not Joe Rogan. It is not my podcast. It is research journals where attention can be given on a level that, at the end of the day, offers no higher respect for your energy and intellect than by declaring that what’s in it is either right or wrong."

In the same Rogan interview, Howard also mentioned allegedly holding a key patent of the AR and VR variety. However, per a subsequent Snopes fact-check, that’s not entirely true.