Do we have that option?

Neill deGrasse Tyson said more than a year ago:

A disturbing trend has gripped our nation in the 21st century, a time when people need science and a rigorous method for testing truth more than ever: “People have lost the ability to judge what is true and what is not,” he said. “It’s not something to say ‘I choose not to believe E = mc^2.’ You don’t have that option.”

Source Watch: Neil deGrasse Tyson Has a Critically Important Message for Americans
Karla Lant | April 21st 2017
https://futurism.com/watch-neil-degrasse-tyson-has-a-critically-important-message-for-americans/

Is he right?

Here are some examples from wiki on the testing of the formula:

Example

For instance, the "Gadget"-style bomb used in the Trinity test and the bombing of Nagasaki had an explosive yield equivalent to 21 kt of TNT. About 1 kg of the approximately 6.15 kg of plutonium in each of these bombs fissioned into lighter elements totaling almost exactly one gram less, after cooling. The electromagnetic radiation and kinetic energy (thermal and blast energy) released in this explosion carried the missing one gram of mass.[35] This occurs because nuclear binding energy is released whenever elements with more than 62 nucleons fission.

Comment

How do you evaluate the exact energy of a bomb explosion?

Example

Another example is hydroelectric generation. The electrical energy produced by Grand Coulee Dam's turbines every 3.7 hours represents one gram of mass. This mass passes to electrical devices (such as lights in cities) powered by the generators, where it appears as a gram of heat and light.[36] Turbine designers look at their equations in terms of pressure, torque, and RPM. However, Einstein's equations show that all energy has mass, and thus the electrical energy produced by a dam's generators, and the resulting heat and light, all retain their mass—which is equivalent to the energy. The potential energy—and equivalent mass—represented by the waters of the Columbia River as it descends to the Pacific Ocean would be converted to heat due to viscous friction and the turbulence of white water rapids and waterfalls were it not for the dam and its generators. This heat would remain as mass on site at the water, were it not for the equipment that converted some of this potential and kinetic energy into electrical energy, which can move from place to place (taking mass with it).

Comment

How do you evaluate the loss of one gram of mass in so much water?

Example

A spring's mass increases whenever it is put into compression or tension. Its added mass arises from the added potential energy stored within it, which is bound in the stretched chemical (electron) bonds linking the atoms within the spring.

Comment

Has this been tested with reliable scales?

Example

Raising the temperature of an object (increasing its heat energy) increases its mass. For example, consider the world's primary mass standard for the kilogram, made of platinum/iridium. If its temperature is allowed to change by 1 °C, its mass changes by 1.5 picograms (1 pg = 1×10−12 g).

Comment

The reference given states: "A variation of ±1.5 picograms is of course, much smaller than the actual uncertainty in the mass of the international prototype, which is ±2 micrograms."

Example

A spinning ball weighs more than a ball that is not spinning. Its increase of mass is exactly the equivalent of the mass of energy of rotation, which is itself the sum of the kinetic energies of all the moving parts of the ball. For example, the Earth itself is more massive due to its daily rotation, than it would be with no rotation. This rotational energy (2.14×1029 J) represents 2.38 billion metric tons of added mass.

Comment

Which cannot be tested, since we cannot put Earth in a balance. Also, not true. Earth is not spinning.

Mass-Energy equivalence : practical examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence#Practical_examples

Neill deGrasse Tyson considers "scientific method" the ultimate test of truth. It depends itself on logic, which is therefore, with the input from senses, a more ultimate one.

His recipe is raising the status of scientists to that of saviours of our sanity, they are not.

What is really "disturbing" or (under the providence of God who can save us from any dangers, when He likes) kind of dangerous, is that Neill deGrasse Tyson is elevating "scientific method" (an alias for opinions of scientists, much of the time) to a status above both Gospel and Aristotle's Organum.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Hugh of Lincoln*
17.XI.2018

* Greater St Hugh of Lincoln, not the child martyr : In Britannia sancti Hugonis Episcopi, qui, ex Monacho Carthusiano ad Ecclesiam Lincolniensem regendam vocatus, multis claruit miraculis, et sancto fine quievit.