Bill Nye and the like have an altitude that really harms actual scientific progress - treating the current consensus among mainstream scientists as absolute truth. These people turn science into a religious cult.
There's a reason why scientific theories are called theories - they might be wrong, and very often they are. History knows a lot of failed scientific theories that were the big shit back in the day, like the idea of aether, phlogiston, etc.
Ok, lets get this out of the way. In scientific knowledge, a theory is the strongest and most bullet-proof concept (as far as science can have them). Theories have centuries of experimentation, proof, validation, re-testing, and more re-testing behind them. Theories are equivalent to laws. The Law of Gravity is also the Theory of Gravity. Just like The Germ Theory or The Theory of Evolution. Science removed the term 'law' because in science, EVERYTHING is set-up for the possibility of being false. A law is viewed as immutable, which isn't scientific. Unfortunately, science didn't chose another archaic word so we have to deal with theory. Whoever made that word choice I hate them for it.
As for the cult angle, you're right. Lets put it this way: if something can't ever have the chance of being proven false, it isn't scientific. This goes a lot into the current philosophy of science and how scientists conduct experimentation. We don't look for truth. We look to see if something is false or not. It doesn't sound like a big difference, but it is. Let me explain.
A social scientist believes in the patriarchy and goes looking for evidence to support that.
A scientist believes there might be a patriarchy, and looks to see if that is false.
Nye himself is nothing but a formerly entertaining encyclopedia who doesn't know anything about science other than facts anyone here can look up on Google and has bought into his own bullshit. He doesn't understand the philosophy of science or the scientific method. Science itself is designed to be constantly challenged and changed, even if modern pressures have altered that (There's a huge problem in science of people not publishing studies where they don't find anything, which is important because that also adds to the body of knowledge. In some cases, NOT finding something could be as big as finding something. Problem is it doesn't look as sexy to the people paying you. But that's a whole other story). In this day and age, people expect science to be this iron-clad thing and hold it up to be that. It really isn' t that. Science isn't a religion. Religions are made to be infallible. Science is specifically made to be fallible.
Lets go with nuclear power from the show. Radiation is always bad, right? Well, the concept of Radiation Hormesis postulates that, in small doses, radiation actually has a protective effect. Survivors of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki exposed to low levels of radiation lived statistically significant longer and healthier lives than those who survived the bombs but weren't exposed to the low levels of radiation. Positive effects of small doses of radiation have been proven in labs around the world many times. In one experiment, radiolabeled cells were supposed to die but they didn't for some reason. The scientist found he was using a different radiolabel than the one he thought, and the cells were exposed to higher than normal levels of radiation. This caused them to survive the toxins he was exposing them to. Maybe one day the concept of radiation always being bad will change. Which will change people's view on nuclear energy.
Nye is a terrible representative for science precisely because he presents it as dogmatic and infallible, almost as a replacement for religion. It isn't. I loathe Nye and I loathe the people like him who don't even try to understand how science works and why its the best way we look at our world. Because it can fail. And because it can change.
