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Below is the full transcript from the recently formed House Astronomical Intelligence Committee hearing on dark matter. It should go without saying that this committee does not actually exist and none of the following actually happened.
TED YOHO (R-Fla): Good afternoon everyone, on behalf of my colleagues I want to thank everyone for coming here.
JOE BARTON (R-Tex): Thanks Representative Yoho, I think the American people are glad someone on their side in Washington is finally taking an interest in this issue.
YOHO: Yes, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank President Trump for suggesting that Congress take a long hard look at this matter.
[TED YOHO makes air quotes when saying ‘matter,’ followed by chuckles from the committee.]
Anyway, I’ll start by asking if you, Dr. Tyson, have anything you’d like to say. Maybe a Comey-esque letter to read?
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: No, Mr. Chairman, I haven’t prepared any opening remarks. To be honest, I’m a little confused…
[Tyson is interrupted]
YOHO: Confusion. That’s exactly why we are here today. We on the Senate Astronomical Intelligence Committee are very confused. We think the American public shares our confusion. Do you know, Dr. Tyson, why we are so confused?
TYSON: Well, if I understand correctly, you are confused about the missing…
[interrupting again]
YOHO: Exactly! We are confused about something that has gone missing. Now look, we are all imperfect human beings, born of original sin thanks to the actions of a single woman 6,000 years ago—we make mistakes. We lose things. I lost my wallet the other day. Wife found it in the dog food dish—I suppose it had fallen from the counter.
But in any case, I lose things. We all here have lost things. Things go missing. Sometimes important things go missing. In 1937, an entire person, Amelia Earhart went missing. Sometimes really big things go missing. Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 went missing a few years ago.
[A man’s voice rises from the audience.]
MAN: The middle class has gone missing!
[Committee members search crowd for a moment.]
BARTON: Who let Senator Sanders in?
YOHO: As I was saying, we are all adults, we know that sometimes things get lost. That can’t be helped, at least, not until the second coming when believers will be perfected and the rest the godless people are damned eternally.
But, I need you, a renowned astrologist…
TYSON: Astrophysicist.
YOHO: Well, formal titles aside, I need you, as a man of science, to answer a simple question— how do you lose a quarter of the universe?
TYSON: Well, sir, I assume you are referring to dark matter.
YOHO: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m referring to. Though from what I understand it’d be more honest to just call it missing matter, since you and your kind don’t seem to have any idea where it is.
TYSON: Excuse me, my kind?
YOHO: Let’s not get into identity politics right now, though I’m sure you’d be much more comfortable there. I meant you and the other scientists. I want you to explain how science lost track of so much of the universe.
TYSON: Well, I’m not sure we “lost track.” You see, dark matter likely formed…
YOHO: I’m going to go ahead and stop you right there Dr. Tyson. You see, I’m not just an ignorant “deplorable” you can impress with your Harvard credentials, I’m an educated man myself, trained as a large animal veterinarian, and I came prepared with a little research of my own.
Dr. Tyson, can you tell the committee when dark matter first came about?
TYSON: Well, fascinating you should ask—the first compelling evidence for dark matter originates in the work of Fritz Zwicky in the early 1930s. Zwicky noticed that in some galaxies there wasn’t enough visible matter, in the form of stars, to account for the shape and speed of rotation. He hypothesized that there was some invisible, or dark, matter in the galaxy that we couldn’t see. But Mr. Chairman, as you can see, the scientists didn’t “lose” the matter, they just discovered it was missing.
YOHO: Oh I see, they didn’t “lose” part of the universe, they just happen to be there when it went missing. How convenient.
Dr. Tyson, before Zwicky’s discovery, did anyone notice that some matter was missing?
TYSON: Well, Lord Kelvin actually suggested in 1884 such a possibility, but…
[interrupting]
YOHO: OK, then 1884. Would it therefore be fair to say, Dr. Tyson, that before 1884 there was no missing matter and then afterwards, our esteemed scientists managed to lose a fourth of the universe?
TYSON: No, that’s an absurd way to characterize what happened.
YOHO: Well, let me change tact here. The scientific community has been searching for dark matter for how many years now?
TYSON: For many decades.
YOHO: And, how is that search going Dr. Tyson?
TYSON: Admittedly, not so well. Many of us were convinced we’d find W.I.M.P.s, weakly interacting massive particles, in some experiment or another by now. But it hasn’t panned out. It would seem the dark matter is hiding somewhere else.
YOHO: Hiding, or purposefully hidden?
TYSON: I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman, I don’t get your question.
YOHO: I just find it convenient that one-quarter of the universe has gone missing over just the same period when socialism seems to be captivating so many folks on the left.
TYSON: Socialism?
YOHO: Yes. Or don’t you think it’s coincidental that the matter went missing in 1884, just a year after Karl Marx died? And only a few decades before Stalin’s revolution? The whole thing stinks of a socialist plot to me. Convince the world that there is only “so much” matter to go around, that the pie is shrinking, and watch capitalism fall in the ensuing panic.
TYSON: Sir, we are talking about science here. There are no political agendas in science. It is the purest form of human endeavor.
YOHO: Spoken like a true globalist.
TYSON: Are you really suggesting that some socialist cabal, spearheaded by men and women of science, has managed to somehow remove one quarter of the universe? Mr. Chairman, it strains credulity—where would you even put that matter? The universe is, by definition, everything there is—how could one take matter out of the universe?
YOHO: No, Dr. Tyson, you misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that the matter was actually removed. I’m suggesting that scientists have made it look to appear that the matter is missing. I’m suggesting that dark matter is in fact a hoax perpetrated by the sort of people who don’t think God was necessary to make humans or anything else. People who are so committed to their collectivist ideologies that they will propose medicare for all, and tweak the data to make it seem as though a sizeable chunk of the universe has simply vanished.
BARTON: I wonder.
TYSON: Mr. Barton?
BARTON: I just wonder if your name might show up in some of her emails.
TYSON: Oh dear god. Senator, are you referring to Hillary Clinton’s emails?
BARTON: Yes, I wonder if we shouldn’t consider subpoenaing your emails, Dr. Tyson, seeing as Hillary found it such a burden to keep storing her own. Perhaps we’d find a few interesting conversations between the two of you? Have you ever had any contact with the Clinton Foundation?
TYSON: With all due respect, I think I’ve given more than enough time to this McCarthy-ish goose chase. There’s no hoax, no grand conspiracy. Just a bunch of elected idiots who wouldn’t know an episode of Cosmos if it hit them in the nose.
BARTON: Very well Dr. Tyson. But please allow me to leave you with one question. What is more likely, that a few overzealous scientists have played a little fast and loose with the data, for some reason I won’t presume to know, or that the entire discipline of science, which over the course of the last 400 years invented physics, split the atom, and put a man on the moon, is somehow incapable of understanding where 25 percent of the universe has gotten off to?
Really, Dr. Tyson, which do you believe strains credulity more?
TYSON: You are clearly misinformed about the nature of science, which…
[interrupted]
YOHO: My apologies Dr. Tyson, but our time here is over. We will have a lunch break now and then resume our next session with Secretary Pruitt, head of the EPA, who will tell us why he rejects the scientific “consensus” on dark matter.
[Representative YOHO raises his hands to make air quotes when saying consensus.]
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