FWIW, I sent a note to the mods about Neil DeGrasse Tyson and @What_Exit says he passes the most basic checks, so I’ll take W_E’s word for it.
Neil has a brand. Posting comments like this as himself is one way he keeps his name out there and maintains that brand.
He wasn’t correcting ideas or making arguments. His posts added interesting commentary. Troll red flags would be arguing, riling people up, leaning in to his authority to criticize other views, and continuing that behavior in other threads. He did none of those. He hasn’t even read any other threads, let alone comment in them.
I wouldn’t say I believe him; I choose to believe him. I see no proof it’s him, and no proof it’s not. So it’s fun to think I might be conversing with the real guy, and I’ll treat him politely until I see trolling behavior.
I have no problem with people who default to scepticism. It’s a valid position, and if you’d be bummed to find out later it wasn’t him, it’s very reasonable to not get invested. But in that case, just ignore him. This kind of shit…
You were jerkish, not snarky. You didn’t take exception to anything wrong he said, you provided more info (which he graciously thanked you for). Your post could have been a good addition to the conversation, but instead you made it in such a way to make yourself feel important, to signal to everyone “look how I cool I am, I don’t believe this guy.” Fuck that shit.
Hell, I wouldn’t. Why bother with all that? I’d just sign up - it’s merely a random message board, not a conference. And I wouldn’t particularly care if someone thought I was the genuine article or not 
.
To me it’s totally warranted to signal to somebody purporting to be some one famous that one is not giving them complete benefit of doubt from the get-go, so I wouldn’t judge very harshly anybody being a bit jerkish in said situation. I find it to be strange in this day and age that anybody would think people should believe them to be who they purport to be simply by default. And even more so that anybody really would believe them, barring some pretty convincing evidence.
The situation would be different by the way, if the person in question just chose a famous persons name as their username, since that alone to me doesn’t reach the bar of purporting to actually be that person. More a sign that they are a fan, or chose it as a joke or what ever. But when you sign off every post with the name, it makes me think “alright, this person better be who they say they are, and I’m not gonna believe them on any kind of hunch or circumstantial evidence”.
I suppose what these checks might be is strictly classified stuff, but can’t help being intrigued. Mods here have means to confirm a user’s identity?
As a tangential anecdote, I was ran into a guy IRL whose schtick was to go around pretending to be the brother of a very known high ranking politician. They looked alike enough that based on that alone he’d have been completely convincing. It was in an environment that made you go “why would he be here” but then “well I guess why not, people turn up in all sorts of joints sometimes”. He was quite friendly, very drunk, and didn’t immediately start rattling off any kind of tall tales that would have made it obvious he was a fraud.
Of course it helped that nobody took the bait either, we just shrugged it all off pretty much. The interaction never got to a point where he would have started obviously stringing us along or anything. Although it may be he said something like “hey guys let’s go to the next bar”, which was still not out of character for a guy in that condition, feeling friendly and starved for company.
So my alarm bells never really went off that loudly, even if I obviously wasn’t buying the act totally. Just kind of thought “well, who knows, he might be who he says, and he doesn’t seem to have any nefarious motives, just out having a good time”. Still couldn’t help feeling a bit dumb when eventually somebody pointed out to us what was actually up with the guy.
What I’m saying is, staying at arm’s length and remaining skeptical proved to be a better stance than just believing the guy based on “well he looks legit, why would he lie, he doesn’t seem to have any agenda”.
My assumption is that he passed the basic checks for socking or trocking.
My point was not to “provide more info”, my point was indeed to take exception to what he said – or at least, to what I interpreted him to be saying, which seemed to be implying that very few if any scientists whose hypotheses turned out to be right fudged their data. My point was to show that history is filled with examples of scientists whose hypotheses turned out to be right who fudged their data, or engaged in other forms of dishonesty. There’s nothing about a citing a book that should make me feel “important”; it’s not as if I wrote it. And yes, I was snarkily expressing skepticism that it really was NDT. That was because I was (and remain) skeptical that it really was NDT, but perhaps time will tell. I certainly could be wrong.
I’m not taking a stance on the question of whether that’s really NDT, but I’m curious how you could possibly have read this post as having said that:
To those of little faith: my next tweet will post today, at 5:57pm ET. -NDTyson
Cool. I try my best to minimise my faith, I find it to be a very unreliable and untrustworthy little bugger.
Thank you, sir! Glad to have you around!
Pfft, what does that prove? He might just be Jack Dorsey having a laugh at our expense.
You have a good point. I really had two objections to the statement. The first was the (quite reasonable, I think) interpretation of “I’ve seen no study on …” and “For all we know …” as implying that we really don’t know the extent to which scientists who have advanced correct hypotheses may have fudged their data. To which it’s fair to respond, well, here’s a whole book about it. To be fair, these events are described in the context of science history and its sanctifying effects on its major figures, and doesn’t tell us anything about modern scientific practice.
My second objection was what I thought was the implication that very few scientists who turned out to be correct on important hypotheses have fudged their data. So many people feel this way that I somehow read it into those comments, but you’re right, it doesn’t say that.
So what’s the deal, Neil? Why did you decide to sign up with your own name, to a board where everybody else is anonymous? Doesn’t that affect (limit) what you can talk about, among other things? Are you for real, Neil?
Cool! Welcome!
There are a few posters who use their own names.
Fair enough!
Whatever you say, Andy L, if that’s even your real name!
I am absolutely thrilled that I get to welcome NDT to the Dope… in the troll thread.
The circle is complete.
Or used to. 
Billy Carter?