It’s complicated, so I’ll just re-share some text copy/pasted from elsewhere.
It started when a YouTuber whose channel is called Coffee Break reached out to Philip of Kurzgesagt as part of a video he was doing into the flaws of popular science communication. Specifically, about some significant errors in K’s video on Addiction. Instead of agreeing to collaborate, or even giving a simple “not interested, sorry”, K took an instant accusatory tone, claiming CB must have been making a “gotcha” piece. CB and K agreed that they would talk more about the matter to try and assuage K’s concerns, but K kept stalling while working on a retraction video, at which time K took down the video that was the impetus for this discussion (shortly after, as one of those aforementioned stalling efforts, having said “I never could bring myself to take it down”, claiming it would be “cruel and unnecessary” to do so—funny, considering in his AMA attempting to spin the story, he said “I was really stressed out about the addiction and the refugee video for years. Being finally open about my mistakes and deleting them felt like weight leaving my body.”). The Refugee video was also taken down along with the Addiction one that CB was interested in.
K claims to be interested in science communication. But here, he decided to make the selfish decision to do what he thought would protect his own personal brand through duplicitous means. He got ahead of the story that falsely assumed was coming, and put up a pre-emptive response to that. Now, CB isn’t entirely blameless. In response to the above, CB put out a rather hot-headed reaction to the whole incident. He didn’t follow up with K to try to understand what had happened; he lashed out in anger at K’s self-righteous arse-covering video.
And then CB started getting harassed. K called out CB, and many of K’s friends (other very large, powerful YouTubers such as CGP Grey and Philip de Franco) made very public statements to their audiences attacking CB. It ended up forcing CB into taking down his video, deleting a whole heap of tweets explaining what happened, and putting out an apology. Perhaps it was an apology that CB should have indeed made, but the need for an apology from K was much, much greater. And one never came. K used his larger platform to spin the narrative so that his large audience, and now also the general public who becomes aware of this, almost all take his side.
I’ll just add that CGP Grey also has his own problems with retractions and being accurate. Namely, he’s put out some videos that at least imply, if they don’t quite outright state some incredibly problematic incorrect science. He put out one based pretty heavily on the pop-science book “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, and used that book as his Audible recommendation in the sponsorship at the end. But GGS is not well-regarded among historians, to say the least, and it’s accused of taking away agency from colonising nations and removing the blame from the people involved in those processes. But when called out for promoting problematic theories, Grey has always doubled down and defended it and said he did nothing wrong. From memory I think there was at least one other video people had serious problems with—possibly his one about the economic impacts of AI/automation. He’s never put out any sort of retraction or apology.
But then he does a video about some missile bunker, and he makes a small mistake where he names the missile wrong and confuses a ground-based missile for a ship-based one. And he puts out this huge apology video, pretending it’s this huge fundamental mistake that he couldn’t bare to let stand. For someone who saw the earlier videos with fundamental errors go unacknowledged, watching that felt really cynical. Like he wanted to project the appearance of academic rigour, but in a way that didn’t open himself up to any serious criticism because it was over such a tiny insignificant detail.
What’s that coffee break thing with kurzgesagt? I’m only partially aware that they’re likely shills for billionaires
It’s complicated, so I’ll just re-share some text copy/pasted from elsewhere.
It started when a YouTuber whose channel is called Coffee Break reached out to Philip of Kurzgesagt as part of a video he was doing into the flaws of popular science communication. Specifically, about some significant errors in K’s video on Addiction. Instead of agreeing to collaborate, or even giving a simple “not interested, sorry”, K took an instant accusatory tone, claiming CB must have been making a “gotcha” piece. CB and K agreed that they would talk more about the matter to try and assuage K’s concerns, but K kept stalling while working on a retraction video, at which time K took down the video that was the impetus for this discussion (shortly after, as one of those aforementioned stalling efforts, having said “I never could bring myself to take it down”, claiming it would be “cruel and unnecessary” to do so—funny, considering in his AMA attempting to spin the story, he said “I was really stressed out about the addiction and the refugee video for years. Being finally open about my mistakes and deleting them felt like weight leaving my body.”). The Refugee video was also taken down along with the Addiction one that CB was interested in.
K claims to be interested in science communication. But here, he decided to make the selfish decision to do what he thought would protect his own personal brand through duplicitous means. He got ahead of the story that falsely assumed was coming, and put up a pre-emptive response to that. Now, CB isn’t entirely blameless. In response to the above, CB put out a rather hot-headed reaction to the whole incident. He didn’t follow up with K to try to understand what had happened; he lashed out in anger at K’s self-righteous arse-covering video.
And then CB started getting harassed. K called out CB, and many of K’s friends (other very large, powerful YouTubers such as CGP Grey and Philip de Franco) made very public statements to their audiences attacking CB. It ended up forcing CB into taking down his video, deleting a whole heap of tweets explaining what happened, and putting out an apology. Perhaps it was an apology that CB should have indeed made, but the need for an apology from K was much, much greater. And one never came. K used his larger platform to spin the narrative so that his large audience, and now also the general public who becomes aware of this, almost all take his side.
Incidentally, here’s the video that CB was working on at the time. Hari, the scientist discussed in the video whom K worked with on his video discussed earlier, communicated very well with CB on it.
I’ll just add that CGP Grey also has his own problems with retractions and being accurate. Namely, he’s put out some videos that at least imply, if they don’t quite outright state some incredibly problematic incorrect science. He put out one based pretty heavily on the pop-science book “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, and used that book as his Audible recommendation in the sponsorship at the end. But GGS is not well-regarded among historians, to say the least, and it’s accused of taking away agency from colonising nations and removing the blame from the people involved in those processes. But when called out for promoting problematic theories, Grey has always doubled down and defended it and said he did nothing wrong. From memory I think there was at least one other video people had serious problems with—possibly his one about the economic impacts of AI/automation. He’s never put out any sort of retraction or apology.
But then he does a video about some missile bunker, and he makes a small mistake where he names the missile wrong and confuses a ground-based missile for a ship-based one. And he puts out this huge apology video, pretending it’s this huge fundamental mistake that he couldn’t bare to let stand. For someone who saw the earlier videos with fundamental errors go unacknowledged, watching that felt really cynical. Like he wanted to project the appearance of academic rigour, but in a way that didn’t open himself up to any serious criticism because it was over such a tiny insignificant detail.