Now, Doob was a scientist who had spent decades of his life training in a particular discipline, namely, to seek and to speak the truth. Even among hard scientists—a notoriously blunt crowd—he had a reputation for saying what he thought. Never mind whose feelings he wounded, whose careers got damaged as a result. This seemed to come across, somehow, on camera. The very reason that so many people trusted him when he went on TV was that he was a straight shooter, he said things that offended the powerful, he stirred things up, and he didn’t care. Certain of those moments had been enshrined forever in YouTube clips and Reddit memes: taking down a Republican senator who didn’t believe in evolution, destroying a climate change denier in an impromptu sidewalk confrontation, reducing a movie star to tears on the Today show by telling her that her stand against childhood vaccination made her personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of babies.