Kristine Vike - 2025-09-06
Hi. Welcome to my channel. We are about to roast one of the biggest science educator channels out there. No biggie. 😅 @hankschannel @SciShow Now, I think this goes without saying, but still, no hate to Hank Green and the SciShow team. They do amazing work bringing science education to the masses and have for years at this point. They are amazing, and these things happen to everyone. If you've been around here long enough, you'll know that I've done a few of them in the history of this channel too! Physicists Don't Understand Why Knitting Works, SciShow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTLvD6-X8WQ (this link no longer works since they took it down) Evie’s excellent remake: https://youtu.be/5btQokB32dQ Want to know more about textile terms making their way into our vocabulary? https://youtu.be/ePFYirFDTMU Find me elsewhere: ❤️ Support my work on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/kristinevike 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristine.vike/ 💌 Website: https://kristinevike.com/ And of course, I brought the receipts 📜: 1. 12th C. Islamic Sock https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/2960/ 2. The history of hand-knitting · V&A. Victoria and Albert Museum https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-history-of-hand-knitting 3. The Bolivian women who knit parts for hearts. BBC News (2015). https://www.bbc.com/news/health-32076070#:~:text=The%20indigenous%20Aymara%20women%20have,some%20babies%20are%20born%20with 4. St. Clair, K. The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History 5. Zarrelli, N. The Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as an Espionage Tool. Atlas Obscura http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/knitting-spies-wwi-wwii 6. Petersen, G. A. J. & McClintock, M. A Guide to Codes and Signals: International Flag Code, Secret Ciphers, Weather Signals, Morse Code, Sign Language, Etc. ; with Flags of All Nations. (Whitman publishing Company, 1942) 7. The story of the Jacquard loom | Science and Industry Museum. https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/jacquard-loom
It’s “craft” when women do it, and “technology” when men do it.
Exactly!!
Yes, you just explained the unconscious bias that so many (mostly) men can't see. My husband is fairly open-minded, but he listened to both videos with me and he couldn't understand where the bias was in it.
Me At the Thrift store. When I see a beautiful cotton handmade crochet table cloth with 3 d flowers or a hand knit patterned colorful comforter for the price of 10$ I marvel at the injustice.
@rileybaker8294 that was exactly what I felt the entire video.
He litterally said it was "mostly art" until science came along XD
It’s all a “mystery” until a man figures it out.🙄
👆 THIS
Until a *white man figures it out
Correction: until a white man figures it out.
So many ancient technologies and theories were figured out by Africans, people of the Middle East, Chinese, and Indigenous peoples throughout the world, but not acknowledged in the West until white men "discovered" them.
@lyrebird9749very true!
@lyrebird9749 other races have the same issue. It's not a white man issue. Stop throwing other women of other ethnicities under the bus to suck up to a different race of man.
I was not prepared for him to be THAT condescending.
@avernion Unfortunately, seems now like it was the AI prompt that was condescending.
@SpartanusCXVII If he was not involved in this video whatsoever then I'd agree but he said these words, most likely after reading and memorizing this script to some degree. Don't put the blame solely on the technology he used; He chose to use it and further decided to use what it wrote for him. He himself then was condescending, etc.
@KleineSneeuwVosjeyou are 100% correct. What I said definitely minimized what he said and how he said it.
Seriously, I was flabbergasted. My jaw dropped like five times watching this video.
Me neither, I have never liked Hank Green but this stuff is coming out and turns out my intuition was correct...
Fibre arts is like 50% maths and 50% repetition, how that isnt science I truly dont know
My second grade teacher told me that I'd never be any good at math (in front of the whole class, I might add). I think of her every time I spin, weave, or dye.
@parkerbrown-nesbit1747me too!
The math involved in sleeve increases/decreases is certainly not child's play.
Trial and error becomes science only when you record data and explain the underlying mechanisms.
No Records: Doing things without writing down results means you cannot reproduce them.
No Predictions: Random guessing does not create a rule or a model for future events.
No Mechanism: Finding out that something works is not the same as knowing why it works.
What Turns Tinkering Into Science
Hypothesis: You must guess a reason why something might happen before you test it.
Observation: You must measure and write down exact results every single time.
Analysis: You must look at the data to see if your reason was correct or wrong.
Testing: Other people must be able to repeat your steps and get the same results.
This video was also about a scientific model, which is different still: A scientific model is a physical, conceptual, or mathematical representation of a real-world system, object, or process that is too big, too small, or too complex to observe directly. It enables people to make accurate predictions about future performance based on the fundamental laws of the universe rather than lived experience.
Example being:
"red sky at night, shepherds delight
red sky in the morning, shepherds warning"
Whilst a shepherd can be right in their home their entire lives, that doesn't make them a scientist or it science. That's Local Weather Lore. To be science you need to understand why it happens like that and be able to predict when it won't due to changes outside of your lived experience.
It works in the northern hemisphere generally governed by westerly winds because there's a link between pressure systems and dust in the air which scatters blue light making sunsets red and likely good weather tomorrow. If the pressure system is easterly then the opposite is true: likely bad weather. This isn't true in the tropics where winds are often easterly.
Doing the same maths (1+1) repeatedly and getting 3 each time, isn't science. Even if you got 2 every time it's not science. You have to have a hypothesis about how things work, measure and observe how it actually works, analyse the data to see if you were right or wrong, devise a new experiment to prove it either way, then test it, observe it, analyse it, and repeat. Until you have proven what works and what doesn't. Then other people repeat your experiments to verify what you found is reproducible and not a result of some unknown variable or bad scientific method/ acumen.
Not just fiber arts, but also cooking was 50% math and 50% repetition. Women's contributions really are under valued.
saying knitting wasn't a science until a group of certain scientists observed it is like saying christopher columbus was the first person in north america
If it wasn't scientifically described before then it obviously wasn't science.
schrödingers science or something. It becomes science only when some dude looks at it
2/3 of those scientists who made the knitting science model were women.
And yes. That is how it works:
"red sky at night, shepherds delight"
"Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning."
That's an ancient weather lore. And it is accurate, but only in specific places. You can 100% predict the weather using it at home all your life and it not be science.
Then a scientist comes along and investigates and determines that it only works well in regions governed by westerly winds. However, if you are in the tropics where weather systems typically move from east to west, the saying will actually predict the exact opposite. And that it's due to when the sun's light shines through a high-pressure weather system, which is full of dust and small particles. This dust scatters the short blue waves of light, leaving only the longer red waves to pass through to your eyes. Because high-pressure systems bring clear, dry weather, and weather moves west to east, a red sunset means a dry, pleasant high-pressure zone is moving toward you for tomorrow.
So yes: you can expertly use a skill for your entire life without it being science.
Science involves determining the link to the fundamental laws of nature (usually maths and physics, ultimately), and determining a formal model which can accurately predict the outcome before experimentally testing it (which is the value of science). Which is then rigorously tested by peers to ensure it always works. If it doesn't, then it's not science.
Blindly knitting the same yarn with the same needles in the same pattern, isn't a scientific model. That's doing what you're told.
Having to frog because you're using a new yarn or needles for a known pattern isn't a scientific model either. Even if you improvise a pattern, that still isn't a scientific model if you have to frog. If you do it once without frogging that's still not a scientific model. That's an anecdote. That could be luck.
It's a scientific model when you can be accurately predict the outcome every time. So you are given new yarn and new needles along with a spec sheet with their properties, and you are asked to knit a new product that has never been knitted before, and you knit it without frogging once and it works first time. And you can do that repeatably.
Then you could say that you have an internal scientific model that you use to accomplish this. But if you can't communicate it to others so that others can achieve the same thing without experience in the field, then it still isn't science.
The point of science is that I can read what someone else did, reproduce their experiments, and get the same results. This enables me to skip the learning phase and get straight into doing what I need to do. That's the value in science: shared knowledge that can accurately predict things that have not yet need observed.
They shouldve called his video "Hank mansplains knitting."
@zombietrash416 😂 for real though
Need to add “incorrectly” into that title 😅
@pixalotlumos Hank horribly fails at mainsplaning knitting
This video should be titled "Feminists burn yet another bridge".
And he's one of your "allies"!
@pixalotlumos Being wrong is always part of mansplaining. Stealing women's credit and glorifying mid to no work done by men is the end goal there
Saying skilled knitters "don't understand the effect certain stitch combinations will produce" is kinda like saying a programmer doesn't understand how writing programs works. That's also "trial and error", and pretty similar methodologically.
@gothicanimeangel96 I mean programming was literally knitting during the apollo days. The software programs were metal loops knitted together. The history of women in software development is mostly glossed over on top of that. Hidden figures is a good movie to learn about that
@xWood4000 I am aware. Women's role in the development and handling of "computers" is really downplayed on the whole, especially considering "computer" used to be a mainly female job.
@gothicanimeangel96
Yaas! Lovelace!!!
My mind is blown at that statement. There are literally whole books dedicated to just stitch patterns, and more than one YouTube video/blog post showing the very mechanics of stitches from basic knits to cables.
A lot of it is trial and error, and intentional dissection, and that’s where a lot of the magic is, but it’s not just blundering along hoping for the best.
Exactly this! 👆
I don't understand how he thinks knitting patterns are designed. He makes it sound like we just start knitting and see what happens and when we get lucky, we write down our happy accidents.
I mean, I do that sometimes too. I like experimenting and don’t like reading text instructions (diagrams all the way for me!). But I know very well that I am in for a lot of frogging and potentially some cursing when I do a project that way. 😂
@KristineVikeYes but that’s also what scientists do…. they write down their happy accidents literally all the time.
@KristineVike Lol I'm just starting to be able to do this after 2 years of crocheting and many more of knitting. And now thinking about it makes me realize even more how much thought and practice is needed for me to be able to just "wing it"
@lesliedunne9916 and somehow they turn into socks! Ooo the next time one turned into a shirt! ah dang, this one I'm working on is turning into a turd.
@TuathaTuna hate it when that happens. I personally just go into a trance whenever I sew and next thing I know I made clothing... I wonder if some Smart Science Man can ever explain to me how sewing works... sigh
"By decoding the patterns that make different shapes..." What do they think we were doing when we made up the patterns? These are not naturally occuring items - they are technologies!
Do you not understand that the genetics-like nature of knitting, its widespreadness and the length of time it has existed for allows for the possibility of (informed) trial-and-error generating very complex patterns?
@bacicinvatteneaca What do you think is the same between genetics and knitting? What links do you see between, say, a Shetland knitter designing a shawl based on novel combinations of traditional stitch patterns, leavened by the creation of new stitch patterns and the messy, iterative, undesigned process of evolution?
@bacicinvatteneaca This comparison makes zero sense
@bacicinvatteneaca bro said survival of the best adapted pattern.
people back then had the ability to think and reason too, you know
@saal0He cannot think that deep.
the knitting community beefing with hank green was not on my 2025 bingo card
@Mali-kr2yu last week he had us all locked in with his little knitting bean app…this week I’m convinced he does know a since person whose ever knit anything
Hank's had it coming.
Dude it's like 2010 ravelry forums (I'm lookin at you, LSG) all over again in here; this is WILD
@shadetreader Hank as an individual or the Sci Show writers collectively?
Repeat after me, Hank; YOU DON’T GET TO DECIDE THE NOTCH-SITUATION! 😂
Next episode of SciShow: Hank learns the meaning of frogging. As in, they have to go and undo an entire video's worth of (mis)information.
I strongly believe SciShow has significantly made poorly researched and badly written episodes this entire year. Its... kinda alarming. Thank you to those in our community who have the expertise, time, and compassion to provide correction videos or even constructive feedback in their video comments.
I think you should offer this video idea to Scishow 😂
@larka.sonder Maybe they are using AI bots to write their scripts.
@draco1811 🤣
Yes, please.
Was brought here by algorithm in August 2026 after Green AI controversy
Get 'im!
same! lol
@darthvaderginsburglike what you have to back a claim like that up
@F1shiez Blatant, obvious tells / hallmarks of LLM speech are all over this video.
@darthvaderginsburgplease give me an example.
@CrispusWaterman mandatory hank learns how to knit video so he can experience knitting first hand
"Knitting evolved purely through intuition and trial and error. But those knit patterns that emerged from generations of knitters tipped off scientists that there might be something useful here."
Ooof... my ancestors just received a punch in the gut with that one...
🙈
That Newton guy sure was intuitive and trial and errory. Pascal, what a quirky trial and error guy, dropping different things into water for fun.
that line definitely made me wince.
it's that women feel, men think mindset and its dumb.
yeah I had to pause after that line to let out a very deep sigh. 😬
As a scientist I get wanting to understand the "hard science" behind why a craft works but you can't just swoop in after artisans have laid out all the groundwork then turn around and say "wow you guys had no idea what you were actually doing".
SciShow video: Trial and error!!!!!
Knitting patterns: Am I a joke to you?
Yeeeessss!!! Exactly
Yes, like this form of textile engineering just developed over centuries through "intuition".
@Nero_Jero The thing is, if you read the original study, the scientists are just trying to model how knitting makes 3D shapes mathematically. One of them knits, and one of them is a textiles expert. The weird "nobody understood this until SCIENCE got involved" tone is all down to the scishow video script.
It’s called mansplaining.
I think the fact that he has a sock company makes this particularly egregious.
He also has an app where the entire premise is to let a little character knit socks. If you pay for premium the little character can knit scarves…because as we all know scarves are so much more valuable and difficult to knit than socks 🥲🤪
You know what, you're right. And now I have the burden of knowing I bought four pairs for my gf's birthday while he approved and was the face of this video. Hank, the socks look really cool and you should thank all the centuries of technological innovations that led to the ability to make and mass-produce those really cool socks!
@SillyLittleGoosies ok, let’s not reach here. His focus timer uses a knitting character but it’s not a commentary on what knit goods are more worthwhile smh
@SillyLittleGoosies this comment feels more like trying to take a personal dig at him, if I'm honest.
if that's what you intended then I understand, that video is obviously upsetting so I don't blame you if your opinion of him is pretty low. but just thought I should mention in case it wasn't your intention to come off that way and rather you were attempting a more general criticism.
@youlikekrabbypattiesdontyou genuinely just your personal interpretation , all that person said was his app lets you pay more to make a scarf instead even though a scarf is just a rectangle and a sock is way harder (objectively true) . your comment comes off like you are a fan of hank green or maybe just have some underlying endearment and dont want anyone to be anything but a constructive critic , when sometimes there are just things to criticize
Omggg the part where he suggests that knitters didn’t know how certain combinations of stitches work until the “scientists” got involved is the most infuriating part. Yes we do! We intentionally design designs and choose stitches based on how they will react and perform in the long run!! The amount of detail I see knitters go into to explain the physics of a stitch and why you should or should not use it just to control how a button band lays or a decrease looks is soooo meticulously preplanned!!
I own several stitch dictionaries, cable patterns have existed for at least several decades, what about the technology that went into building/using domestic (and industrial) knitting machines (a descendant, so to speak, of hand knitting)? All those things are products based on understanding how knitting works.
I don’t know whether to laugh or tear my hair out.
It makes me want to cry 😭 I can’t knit but I’ve seen enough cardigans to notice. I noticed as a SMALL CHILD because I was looking from a perspective of respect and admiration. For my Grandmother, specifically 🥹
When I watched the video it was my understanding that at the point in the video when they make that statement, they're not referring to modern knitters, instead referring to ancient knitters who developed knitting. And at that time of course they would have no idea what combining different patterns would do.
Not to mention, we usually knit things with functionality, and all that work going into something that would just be used to cushion in packaging would be a remarkable waste of time! It's not that we don't KNOW that knitting can do that, it's that we usually make things that have a different use-value (and beauty) than the items he speaks about.
@darsynia they're not trying to understand the physics of knitting to find more uses for knitting. They're doing it so they can combine it with other technology and improve those other technologies.
Who else got this recommended after learning Hank used AI?
@Jack-c6v6g yeah buddy
@Jack-c6v6g it’s really weird to me finding this and the AI stuff. I jokingly declared Hank Green my nemesis on TikTok after finding a video of him talking about putting helium in your rectum. My exact response was, “wtf Hank, people listen to you. Why would you suggest something so dangerous?”
That was in 2020. Haven’t liked the guy since
Yay sad yay
me, i was actually watching a video by a different creator titled smth like "hank green uses ai and knitters arent shocked"
@Revon18522nice. I have to find this video. The whole thing motivated me to start crotchet again.
"more of an art the a science until the physicist showed up" my flabbers are gasted
I just have the image of ye oldy scientist showing up and being like I just discovered how knitting works! While the knitter stands there like, I know. I just explained it to you.
@LynetteTheRoguebasically the experience of minorities. literally yesterday i overheard a video talking abt how scientists discovered adhd gets worse when women are on their periods like dude ive literally been dealing with that since i had my first period this isnt news
@Revon18522😂 I know what you mean.
@Revon18522 Did you tell anyone?
Sure, it's obvious to you because you live it. It isn't always intuitively obvious to everyone. And that's what hank said "isn't always intuitively obvious"
This is "the illusive obvious"; that which is so obvious to the expert that they don't bother to explicitly teach to students.
Also: one person finding a correlation isn't established science. It's an anecdote. You have to carefully design an experiment to remove all other variables in order to establish it as known science. And then others have to duplicate your experiment and reproduce your results.
I feel like the majority of the hate against this video comes from a lack of scientific understanding and literacy in the viewer... Even though many claim to be scientists... Then again, I've worked with more PhD's who are completely useless than those who are useful. Half of them somehow got a PhD but don't actually understand the fundamentals of science.
Sorry, I missed all the scientific research papers written by the knitting community prior to when the (two female knitting) scientists showed up...
There's a difference between being able to do something and it being a science. This was also someone defining a scientific model which is different again: The model can accurately predict the outcome of something without experimentally doing it. If knitters would always intuitively obviously do that, then frogging wouldn't be a thing. Knitting the heel on a sock would always be intuitive, and obvious. But I'd guess that's not most knitters experience.
It's not condescending or offensive to say the thing wasn't fully understood until someone wrote the chain of physical laws down, back to the fundamental laws of the universe.
Understanding a specific combination of knit and purl stitches in a given wool yarn with given needles results in a given fabric property is experience. That isn't science. You need formal proof, and the "why" for it to be science. And if you think knitters understood it all better than these researchers before they wrote the paper then I'm guessing you aren't that familiar with the general relativity geometry principles they used to explain how stitch arrangements create curved, self-folding 3D structures? Knowing that the fabric will behave in a way from experience isn't the same as knowing why they behave like that, and being able to use that why to accurately predict how novel arrangements of novel fibres would behave before making it. This is actually used to create copper wire knitted RFI and EMI Faraday cages. I doubt many knitters could improvise a pattern for that without frogging. That's what the science is for: reduces the trial and error required to get the desired result.
It's not necessarily condescending to say something wasn't/isn't a science. It can be a verifiable fact. Artistic understanding and capabilities are equally prestigious as scientific understanding. They are just different.
The word "art" comes from the Latin ars, meaning skill or craft. Historically, it meant any mastered ability. That's prestigious. But it isn't science.
Science is defined as a way of thinking and building organized knowledge using testable explanations and predictions. And a core process of asking questions, forming hypotheses, testing through experiments, and drawing conclusions.
Saying it was more of an art than a science until the physicist (scientist) showed up is tautology: It's obvious. Because it takes a scientist to make it a science. And anyone can be a scientist! You don't need a qualification. You just need to follow the scientific method and principles as you complete the methodical work.
To quote a character i read:
"Simple doesn't always mean easy."
Absolutely! 💯
Yes! Simple, NOT easy
If it IS so simple, let's have Hank make a toe-up sock. Easy, right?
@Jilbertb the magic type that at knit 2 at a time and one inside the other
Are we having him do a turned heel, or a heel flap like in Nordic knitting?
Just imagine: "Those Wheel designs that emerged from generations of builders tipped off scientists that there might be something useful here." Gigantic eyeroll.
Awkwardly: The very first mechanical wheels were invented around 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia. However, they were placed flat on the ground to spin clay rather than stood upright to move carts.
The concept of taking that exact mechanical assembly, flipping it 90 degrees onto its side, pairing it with a second wheel via a central axle, and putting a cart on top didn't occur to anyone until around 3200 BCE
There were 300 years of people having wheels and not thinking to use them for transport.
Another example:
The chainsaw was invented for and used in human surgery for over a century.
It wasn't for decades until someone thought of using it for industrial logging.
All of that is irrelevant to Hanks implication that makes sense in the scientific context but most people in this comment section are apparently ignorant to:
Hank said "Isn't always intuitively obvious". He wasn't saying that nobody can ever improvise a pattern, or successfully produce the right garment from a new yarn/set of needles on the first attempt. He was saying that the process isn't in every single instance innately understood to every person. Like breathing. or maybe walking.
Anyone who tries knitting the heel on socks for the first time might be able to comment on how "intuitive", or "obvious" it is. If it were always intuitive and obvious then frogging wouldn't be a thing. This shouldn't be controvercial.
The scientific model (which was made by two women, and a man) is valuable because it enables people with no intuition for the craft to accurately predict the outcome of a given novel pattern, with potentially novel yarns (like copper wire), and potentially novel needles, This could enable people with no experience in knitting to design something to fulfil a purpose outside of the traditional garments, and hence, "useful" in helping them achieve their goals in their otherwise unrelated discipline, in ways other than the tacitly understood: keeping them warm and comfortable. Even though as Kristine points out: it's unlikely they are actually wearing knitted clothes. More likely woven.
(And then she uses the Bolivian woven heart occluders as an example for how women use generationally passed down knowledge and experience to weave medical devices because the tech didn't exist for child sized devices in that location, at that time.)
Meanwhile there are potential applications for knitted copper wire materials to form flexible Faraday cages that block Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and Radio Frequency Interference (RFI). But if you ask a knitter to knit you one of these, no pre-existing pattern exists, and they are unlikely to have knitted with copper wire before, so they are unlikely to find it: "always" "intuitively" "obvious". And the scientists find it unexpectedly "useful" to their line of work.... Not in general.
That's your inference, not their implication.
What depresses me the most, I think, is how drastically the tone of the knitting video would change if it was a stereotypically male craft. There was a stark absence of desciptors like "ingenius," "clever," "methodical," "invaluable," etc. that I would have expected when talking about knitters and fiber artists of the past. The more mundane something appears to be, the more powerful its effects on society! The same ingenius brain that engineered the roof over your head and the phone in your hand also engineered the clothes on your back, and it deserves the same level of respect!!
I have a huge amount of respect for Hank Green, and I'm grateful that his knitting fans are being respectful and not turning the comments into a flame war. I think that more than anything, we just want a simple acknowledgment of the video's shortcomings and a PROPER REVISION that consults ACTUAL KNITTING EXPERTS because oh my god that would be awesome!!!!!!!!!!
I'd like to see how the podcast 99% Invisible would handle knitting. The premise of that show is to explain the details of things that function so well they are generally overlooked.
Misogynists deserve to get flamed.
The thing is, is that for a moment it WAS a male craft. From what I remember there was a male only knitters guild and women were not allowed.
No reason to respect somebody who built their entire identity online on "fighting worldsuck" and "imagining the universe complexly" and being fundamental in shaping the internet ecosystem and then being completely silent about the world's first livestreamed genocide.
That is my only real problem with scishow. I love it and I understand it can't go into the weeds of a topic, when most people wouldn't understand the weeds, so sometimes there would erupt random warfare in the replies of a single comment about the scientific opinions on the mechanics of a language mentioned in passing in the video (which is so fun to see, I learn a lot, and people usually are pretty respectful) and sometimes I think that a video breaks through to the more lay person audience, so in the comments of the Moon mining video I saw a STARK lack of anyone saying anything along the lines of that might be dumb actually, at least in the sense of bringing resources back on Earth and creating a complete disbalance, because...it's easier? I hoped to see some more educated opinions, but found none. Yet I do realise that the channel is MEANT to pique your interest and not teach you everything, but I have seen videos that bother me like this more than once.
There was a video on gift giving which...from a non-mega-consumerist perspective is TERRIFYING. With a strange insistence that grandparents gifts are tacky and annoying and not...I think it was a blender, that you like asked for? They might not be able to afford such an appliance, but it gets worse as they decide in the end that the best gift is money....HUH?! I understand they report the data, but like...maybe don't perpetuate a mentality that is driving a further wedge between people and stop implying old people are annoying, that is weird! Trying to research this was starting from a strange perspective of not even looking at the culture you are in, or doing much comparing with others(which is a huge problem in science as a whole, called WEIRD, standing for western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic people making up a majority of study participants, as it is often college students participating in all sorts of studies, that usually come from the west) and not even continuing to see what might be the cause or much the level of closeness to the person you are talking about.
My understanding is that they have multiple writers for all videos, as well as a long process of checking sources, but sometimes they completely mess up in the tone like this precisely because of sticking to the research so much. If you only read research, you'd be a terrible psychologist for example, because you'd never see real people experiencing real issues. You need to see the real world too and it would be so much easier to implement that in their videos if they got some people or even their own personhood involved. There was a whole mess about a trans video they uploaded, not because the facts of it were all that off, but because the language around it was, and more importantly, it entirely skirted the real world issues those people face, so rather than helping solve those by teaching a wider audience, they just kind of talked about other things, kind of incorrectly, continuing the potential of further harm.
I respect the team immensely, but that is an issue that just pops up every now and then, in probably a good hearted effort to be more approachable, but nonetheless doing more harm than good.
Oh boy. I am a man, a knitter, and a scientist (biologist). I cringed when Hank made the comment about the physicists showing up. Yikes. The math and physics involved in just one example, short rows that make knitted fabric change direction, such as at the heel of a sock, is not "just" art, but a clear application of scientific and mathematic principles.
The "then the physicists showed up" statement isn't the overt, in-your-face sexist attitude typical of the "manosphere", but really demonstrated how deeply and buried in the subconscious are the ideas of the value of men and women.
Ooof. 🙈
The worst part for me is probably seeing how the video could have been so good with just a few tweaks to the tone! It could still fit their ten minute format.
To use another stereotype: they could have simply send the scripts to their grannies before the shoot ;)
Reminds me of his "hydrpgen is a slut" comparison. Bro never learns.
One of my favorite bits of knit/crochet history is how a female mathematician started demonstrating hyperbolic geometry using knitting and crochet (works better with crochet solely because you don't have to hold an infinitely-increasing number of stitches on the hook), where the best models before were very delicate and mostly made of paper. Check out the Coral Reef Project if you've never heard of it!
@SilverTwilight I Googled and found Margaret Wertheim's TED talk about the Crochet Coral Reef and can hardly believe I hadn't heard of this before, but I'm also not a marine biologist, I spent my entire working life and most of my research in Alaska, so I can use that as an excuse! 😆 This project is a great example that shows how closely knitting and crochet are tied to mathematics, especially when making garments that have to curve around body parts.
How many times do we see videos that demonstrate a pattern where the demonstrator will apologize for having to show the math, and then usually will state that they have done the math for you so you can look at a chart instead of having to do the math for your own size or number of stitches. But I also know of many knitters and crocheters who swear they can't do math, but they have a truly innate sense of mathematical relationships and have no problem constructing perfectly fitting garments, which belies their insistence that they don't "know math".
watching this video after Hank's statement that he uses AI to "locate resources and research" makes a lot of sense
As a knitter and someone who studied physics, the thing that strikes me about the SciShow video is that they seemed to start from the assumption that the audience finds both knitting and physics boring. You’ve described the bias against knitting in your video, but as someone equally interested in the physics, there is a lot they didn’t bother to mention:
Modelling knit and purl stitches is difficult for physicists because…
Adding other stitches would be too difficult for physicists because…
Early attempts to predict the fabric shape were wrong because…
Predicting the shape of knitting and purl patterns has led to improved physics models because…
I think that if the main idea of the video was “studying knitting helps physicists get better at physics” then it would be possible to talk about the achievements of the physicists without downplaying the expertise of knitters. But that take wasn’t considered interesting enough, so the SciShow needed to create something more “exciting” and came up with “physicists make knitting better!”. Sigh…
Oooooh. Your list of questions are so engaging too. I would have loved to learn more about the intersection of fibre arts and physics with those angles! 👀
@ruthmills4228 I think there were also plenty of missed opportunities to talk about how physicists can help knitters without being so dismissive.
There are so many things knitters have strong intuition/rules of thumb for that are not explicitly defined.
Going with the example from the video, wouldn’t it be great to know exactly how much a stockinette fabric of a given size would curl, given the type and thickness of yarn, and needle size? Think of how much time that would save pattern designers!
@ruthmills4228 yeah I was really confused by the video, the title and the contents didn't really seem to make a lot of sense. The thesis statement was extremely unclear
This is a really good point!
@ruthmills4228agreed! For me it’s the description of scientists and knitters as if those couldn’t be the same person.
"Now, for centuries, knitting was more of an art than a science. But then, the physicists showed up" I had to pause there and take a break. What a condescending and offensive sentence.
Do you not watch any of their stuff? It's always a dismissive tone about nature, human behavior, or anything until science comes along. Nothing special or interesting about this one other than people using identity politics for clout.
@nichan008 Anyone who says "Identity politics" unironically is a loser and u certainly fit the bill
@nichan008 that’s a huge reach.
@nichan008 Who do you think is farming clout here in this insular knitting community? Have you considered that you're only seeing it that way because you're an outsider, engaging in a discussion that doesn't actually impact you, and your POV is so narrow that you can't lay eyes on a community commiserating amongst itself & understand what's happening without including yourself in the narrative?
@srahhhI've never 'included myself in the narrative' and if it were commiserating amongst itself we wouldn't be here now, would we? No, these people are specifically talking to Hank Green (I think, it's been awhile), and patting each other on the back while they dismiss the science behind the video as being gender biased when they don't know the people who did the science. They also praise him for his work in general but this one is wrong, just because they don't like his tone, when that is the same tone exhibited across any random video you check.
If you would like me to insert myself, then the issue that effects me in all this is the continual build up of science denial and devaluation these days, it's insidious and pervasive.
I believe SciShow started as a way to make science accessible to the masses, because the WORST kind of scientist (in my experience as a science major and educator) is the kind of scientist that gatekeeps, gaslights, condescends and doesn't do their research properly. I am so disappointed that Hank ticked all those boxes in this video.
Textile arts created the computer, not the other way around! Great video
Genuinely the first moon mission literally used rope memory. It was a bunch of hand woven wires.
That's as simplified and inacurate a statement as saying that knitting was more an art than a science before physicist came along.
Textile was a primary component (if not THE primary component) of many of the first computers. Textile was used (and sometimes indispensable) in computers, but it was not the source of its creation.
@cortexavery1324 the technology of the first computers is the same as of the automatic pattern looms. It's the directly predating technology. I don't say it lightly. A loom punch card is the source of the computer program.
@gothicanimeangel96 Again, whether or not the pattern is the same, whether or not a loom punch card imitated the textile's patterns was not anything new, does not mean it is the source...
Maybe to be fair we have different meaning when saying it is the source.
Do you claim that it is textile that pushed people to imagine and create the computer ? Or do you maybe claim that without textile the computer would not have been created ?
@cortexavery1324 What were all trying to explain to you was that the loom WAS a computer. You input data on punch cards and it was rendered into the pattern. That’s a computer.
The intuition line really got to me. It’s like saying knitters were just going off gut feelings rather than using their brains. Spoken like someone who never had to go off a gauge swatch and measurements to make a sock without a pattern. Believe me, in those moments, the only thing my intuition is telling me is to find a pattern where someone else already did the math! And who would that someone be? The generations of knitters that came before me. Like the old sock you pictured at the start, that pattern probably goes around uninterrupted. That didn’t happen through intuition, but through deliberate math and planning.
And different persons have different shaped feet and have different fit preferences for different uses of "the sock". Adjustments can be made when you are hand knitting a pair of socks.
THIS! I had a vest I wanted to knit and I accidentally bought my Custom Dyed yarn in the wrong weight. I was already using the fabric design and vest body from two different sources by the time this third element came in my note book looked like I'd solved a calculus proof to get the final pattern numbers.
Bright side I got to indulge in my love of math and ended up with a beautiful and well fitted sweater vest.
The annoying thing is, Hank Green is a biologist, he should know that "gut" feelings happen in the brain! Intuition is a form of intelligence. I'd even go so far as saying that reductionistic and holistic thinking are both forms of intuition, and you can't be a scientist until you've figured out why you need both reductionistic and holistic thinking to truly understand a subject, especially in biology. In maths and physics you can often get away with only reductionistic thinking and all you'd be missing is a chance at a theory of everything, but anything more complex requires understanding emergent properties, which means you need to at least be aware of the concept of holism.
@Regretr1 *science communicator- he is not a working biologist and that will contribute to expert bias
It does go around uninterrupted, because the row change is visible!
Hi! I’m Aymara and Quechua and you have no idea how much it means to me that you mentioned our community
Hi, is there a way to find out more about your crafts, people and making of these heart devices?
The god tier intricacy of the needlework is incredible!!!! People are so cool
Just because a technology is older than our modern scientific methods doesn't make it any less of a rigorous development
That video honestly felt like stepping on knitters to lift up scientists and I'm super disappointed in the team that developed it for not doing their due diligence and playing the one-up game.
How could you even possibly gather that from the sci show without mental gymnastics?
@DarrenMcStravick - there were so many errors that were so deftly pointed out in this video, how could you ask that question in any serious manner?
The most glaring and lazy one IMO being showing a photo of REVERSE STOCKINETTE when talking about stockinette- ESPECIALLY when the difference between the two was the whole point.
Lifting up both at the same time would not have taken anything away from the science they wanted to highlight!
@KristineVike How did they fail to lift both up? They drew major attention to knitting's contemporary scientific significance, which literally gets a lot of sciency people on board with zero cost to the current knitting community.
@EsmereldaPea You didn't even read what I'm responding to, did you? I'm asking them how they gathered that SciShow's video was "stepping on knitters to lift up scientists" and that they "developed it for ... playing the one-up game". This was what I was responding to, and it's incredibly obvious that that was what I was doing.
This kind of reminded me how majority of healers in the olden times were women who spent their whole life on acquiring knowledge about chemistry of plants and then phisics of processing them into a medicines that helped easing pain, stopping bleeding, relaxing muscles and even relieving depression. For which they were called witches.
This was not always the case. Silvia Federici argues that women held respected positions in commons as healers and that witchhunts were used to take away these positions of power. Before private ownership of land, people worked in commons, where they worked the land together without owning it, used wells etc. without any question of ownership. Witchcraft, as an accusation, was a vehicle to disrupt the power structure of those commons. That vehicle was used to establish private ownership over the commons. To prevent people from rising up against the people making private claims of ownership over the land that was previously shared, through persecution by the church these women who would often lead these uprisings were shut down by accusing them of witchcraft. At least this is the thesis of the book Caliban and the Witch by Federici, it is a great read and really puts a different perspective on how we look at witchhunts in the past and how they are often seen as simply ignorant fanatic christians doing something silly rather than thought out methods to disrupt existing power structures.
That is definitely true. The entirely erroneous system of humorism designed by men in Greece and Rome is pretty much out of practice--- but the herbalism practiced by ancient women in many cultures is still used today. Yet I can guess which one is more respected as "hard science" of the time
No way of knowing what a stitches will do? What??? Knitters know EXACTLY what stitch combinations will do.
I’m a crocheter who doesn’t knit, but it translates the same. We know our crafts. We know our skills. We know the math involved in the shapes we create. Just because YOU don’t understand it, doesn’t mean we don’t.
Excellent comment. Im a knitter and a crocheter. I agree 100%. Thank you.
That's not the point that's being made, most knitters did not have models/ methods to quantify the magnitude nor direction of the forces, which is what the physicists using the models cared about because that's how it gets used in science and engineering applications. Obviously, they have detailed patterns, just like I have detailed recipes for baking from my grandparents. But it is not a slight for not knowing/ quantifying the forces this, because for most purposes when knitting sweaters and socks it doesn't matter any more than it would matter for me to know the K constant of dough once the gluten starts to develop. But for mass manufacturing this value is likely useful, as are the models made to know how the fabric will move when it is constrained to different forces.
I’ve never seen a more polite or eloquent reaction video in my life. So well done.
I recently (a month ago) applied for a sewing teacher job, where experience teaching sewing was required. They offered me the job … at $15USD an hour. I said, “My trade and skills are just as valuable as mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, and electricians, and you’re paying them $85USD an hour.” The response, “we know, but $15 an hour is what we’re paying for this position.” I said, “And you already mentioned that people with sewing skills are hard to find.” And that concluded that job offer. I’m still appalled at such an insulting offer.
Ooof. That is so frustrating, and yet so clearly underlining the point too. 🫠
I was tailor, in the early 80's, made $15/hr back then, which is equivalent to $58 today.
Don't even get me started about quilting and the insulting prices people offer to pay to make them a custom quilt + longarming it...
@Jilbertb- I was a seamstress in the early 80s and I think I also charged about $15-20 per hour for labor.
I still sew but do more knitting lately, which takes SO MUCH MORE TIME. If I had a penny for every time someone admired my work and then said "you should sell that" I'd be a gazillionaire.
Most people have zero concept of what is involved in making a garment. The human body is not a 2-dimensional paper doll.
I’m absolutely delighted that you stuck up for the value of the skills you have. I’m sure someone will unfortunately accept that job, but at least one person told them correctly. Well done.
@ladyjusticesusan I was paid $8 at a sewing store. It was my hobby job. The robber barrens who claimed to be good Christians gave us a 10 cent raise. Insulting! While they drove a $100,000 custom made corvette!!!
Yep, women are devalued and our skills are devalued.
I’m a LMT now and I make good money for a change!!!
Hank: "a fabric of all knit stitches"
The fabric: all purl stitches
I am a textile engineer who works for one of the research groups cited. It's very interesting to see how our work has been combined with other researchers, and where the SciShow writers stumbled in communication. (Also, the textile side of our group did not know this video was happening and literally found out when the physicists sent a link. I certainly have some questions for them if there was a fact checking process.)
I wrote a longer comment, but it feels like a wall of text. So I'd like to suggest people read the first two sources in the list. One is an article and the second is a research paper. Internally, we never refer to loops as knots, but the article does still reference the Egyptian sock (which I've told them should be called a "looped structure" not knitting). I have insights I could share on how terms might have been misunderstood by the writers or to better explain why this type of research is valuable to industrial textile development. But I wanted to share that at least one of the research teams does have a deep knowledge and respect for the complexities of textiles. I've been hand knitting for 20+ years and programming/operating industrial equipment for 6 years.
I'd wondered about that, considering how many scientists I know who either are or live with knitters (and other textile crafters). The communities are not nearly as divided as that video makes it sound.
I tried not to pull out your work, since there could so quickly be things lost in adaptation. We know there is a lot of science-crafting enthusiasm overlap. It’s a large part of this community, after all! ❤️
i tried to follow up on the references but met with a security check wall. very disappoiinting.
@robina.9402
Is there a way that the public can read your work? I really does seem fascinating, particularly if those knitted samples were part of your teams investigations.
@lisascenic I know the first two links are us, and if you search for Drexel University Center for Functional Fabrics, you'll find the work we can publish. Another paper linked is "Characterizing and predicting the self-folding behavior of weft-knit fabrics."
Editing to add: we aren't able to share most of our current work as it's funded by the Army and is considered controlled information. There are some papers in the works, but that process is not fast!
Has anyone used Hank Green’s Focus Friends app? Bc while I like the app, a pet peeve of mine is that socks are the default reward and scarves are the upgraded reward.
In my years of knitting, I’ve knitted dozens of scarves but only half of one sock…bc it’s hard! 😂
Ok, rant over.
I haven't used focus friend but just hearing that makes me mad. A scarf is just a rectangle. Clearly he's never tried to knit a heel!
Seriously
Right?! After over a decade of knitting lace scarves and shawls, I'm just now finishing my first pair of socks. Short rows are daunting! Plus, gauge matters in socks. Not so much in a scarf.
@trainzelda1428Or close up a toe without leaving an uncomfortable seam. (I'm a dedicated toe-up gal, which is its own variety of porcupine wrestling.) Or for that matter bind off a cuff (sock, sweater, anything) so it's not too loose or too tight and looks good with the rest of the fabric.
I downloaded it, but quickly realized that all the good stuff, including the super basic concept of being able to allow my music app to be used while in focus mode (so I can listen to music while crafting) was behind a paywall. Disappointing.
If Hank didn't use AI I'd never have learned how awesome and important knitting is.
This is my second knitting video in as many days. Huge respect to the knitters out there!
I really hope Hank Green sees this! He seems pretty good at owning mistakes and correcting himself when he learns some of the information he shared was wrong. I would love for him to set the record straight on this one too
Sometimes…
no it took them a year to take down their extremely crappy very factually wrong video about trans people after a lot of complaining, and then they put back up kind of a still cruddy video. they are very bad at it.
@artosbear- I didn't know that. SO disappointing to hear.
I stopped following them because of their dismissive tone & factual inaccuracies.
It's not that deep. Ya'll are over dramatic.
Thank you. I was SO EXCITED by the Title of SciShow's Video. AND SO UPSET at how bad it was. I have listened to Computer Scientists who are Knitters talk about their papers. The whole 'knitting is just for grannies until Scientists Came Along' was just 🤮
This! Especially considering how long we have used fiber art to explore mathematics.
I looove when science nerds get obsessive about fibre arts. Enthusiasm of all kinds is contagious, but there is just something about the two that makes my heart sing!
@DawnBurn not to mention the whole dedicated field of mathematical knot theory, which by no way predates complicated knots for different purposes.
I lost track of SciShow a long time ago because I just couldn't keep up with it, but the algorithm suggested this knitting video, and I was disappointed with how little research seemed to have gone into it, and it was obvious to me as someone who has never knitted or crocheted, but who does have a theoretical physics degree. I agree that it gave me the ick when it was so dismissive of the expertise of centuries of craftspeople (mostly women).
@chesneymigl4538just this year, a long-standing math problem was resolved by crochet -
"In 1981, Misha Gromov, winner of the Abel Prize (considered the “Nobel” of mathematics), posed a question about the existence of certain geometric mappings in higher dimensions.
For decades, no one was able to fully classify these structures until Heikkilä and Pankka succeeded in 2025."
"Crochet allowed them to create structures that represented the curvature of mathematical spaces, and the chessboard fabric showed how these mappings behaved.
By visualizing this work, other mathematicians and students were able to understand this complex process."
"The research showed that quasiregularly elliptic varieties meet a specific algebraic condition, which allowed them to be fully classified."
Crochet explained math in a way that math couldn't explain math.
“…a knot, cannot.” Is poetry! 1:34
Another comment for knitting being "more" useful: in Women's Work by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, she suggests that our ability to spin thread and make fabric to keep ourselves warm could be one of the essential factors in human beings' spread across the globe into areas previously very difficult to live in (this is just a bad summary of my own, please go read it if you haven't yet!). The tone in the SciShow video hurts and I hope they take to heart all the feedback they're getting.
The BBC series Human, presented by paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamah, mentions the invention of textiles as most likely having been essential to our distant ancestors’ survival during the last ice age.
@kellydalstok8900 Most definitely. Tanning of hides, how to sew them together to make jackets, pants, shoes/boots... It was essential for survival. Without these, humans would have frozen to death. Later we would need clothing that was more seasonal...as in lighter weight. In comes the study of available plant fibers and what could be created out of those. Lots of credit to our ancestors and us building on their discoveries as time went on. 👍
I LOVE that book.
I just ordered that book! Finding this video on the same day was a lovely coincidence.
I recommend that book so often!
Ooooh my husband has one of these 'umbrellas' in his heart. I didn't know these were handmade!
Oh my goodness! How amazing! I hope he continues in good health. ❤️
@MijnWolden i never knew either! How amazing is that
I was so disappointed that this wasn't included in the scishow as it's one of my favorite examples of applied medical science and knitting. I hope you and your husband continue to live well. 😊
I don't know, but that might be the far more common "stent"?
The vast majority of medical stents are not hand-knitted, nor are they knitted at all. Most modern stents are mass-produced through high-tech precision manufacturing, with laser cutting being the industry standard method.
Although the hole in the heart occluders are sometimes hand knitted in bolivia for some babies. Is your husband Bolivian? And born after 1996? The vast majority are mass produced.
One thing that I find interesting is that Hank mentions that its hard for humans to predict how stitches will end up, when that's not true? I'm a crocheter, so not a knitter, but I have found that 4 years into my craft has given me so much intuition in how yarn and stitches work that I freehand a majority of my patterns! I can even predict when I should make color changes for the most part in plush making! I love to follow other people's patterns, but I don't require them to know how shapes work anymore. I do get interesting surprises every once in a while when attempting something new, but I just change and adapt, just like scientists do.
2:11 Fellow Bolivian here! Indigenous women have created the most beautiful fabrics! Aguayos are truly a reflection of the occidental culture of our country, they’re even older than Bolivia itself. Centuries of engineering and dedicated craftsmanship were the backbone of survival in incredibly harsh weathers, and they’re still very relevant now! I have many in my house and you can see them everywhere too. It’s amazing that these skills could translate to the medical field, saving many lives now and in the future! It’s worth mentioning that this lifesaving device is VERY cheap and was invented here too! Utilizing the skills of aymaran women that can even knit with fabrics of only 0,1 mm! Thank you for mentioning my country! I’m sure you know a lot of this topic, I got really excited when you talked about it (:
Thank you so much for this! Did you notice SciShow's peculiar choices when it came to clips of people knitting? They only showed us people making slow, awkward movements with needles and yarn, and to me, that really underscores their apparent anti-"craft" bias. We longtime knitters have skilled, experienced hands, and had they done their homework, it would have been easy enough to showcase that.
I think that's just the awkwardness of stock footage - it's always just a bit uncanny. So, I doubt it's intentional but I agree with you it adds to the overall tone of this video which is so off.
It could have been that they wanted slow clips to make it easier for non-knitters to follow along too. But if memory serves there are some old clips of Shetland women and people in speed knitting competitions having a go. And goodness, my hands could never!
@KristineVike I can see that being the goal during the portion where they're trying to explain how knitting works, but at 9:46, when they've almost managed to recognize that knitting has been a sophisticated technology for centuries -- the clip they pair with it totally undermines the almost-compliment and plunges us right back into the vibe of "those wacky creatives did something cool, but only the scientists can make it important."
@riveranalyse It doesn't need to be intentional to be a problem. The careless mistakes and oversights in this video make me question the images this channel shows and the statements they make about every topic they cover. In the best of circumstances, that kind of sloppiness would be disappointing coming from a self-identified science channel, but in the current environment of weaponized misinformation, it's unacceptable. There's already such a low bar for what people are willing to accept as fact, and a science channel - even an entertaining popsci one - should be pushing back against that by at least doing their due diligence.
All of those knitters were old, which suggests that young women don’t knit.
Art is science. Cooking is science. Crochet and knitting is science. Olympic sports is science. Architecture is science.
Everything we have built stems from our innate understanding of numbers and the physical world around us. It is in EVERYTHING we do.
Art is silly, cooking is silly, knitting is silly, and so on. Everything can be anything if you cherry pick something that happened one time.
Let's not kid ourselves, most people do these things for practical reasons and for fun.
There is science behind everything, precisely because scientists are that child that never stops asking why and thinks knowing is more satisfying than doing.
Did the Romans know why their concrete was self healing? Did that prevent them from using it?
No, but pretending an innate understanding is all you need prevents us from actually learning why things work.
If that’s true, why is there any value in using the word science at all? When you broaden a definition that far, it becomes meaningless. It might allow you to be “right” on a technicality, but it eliminates any value being “right” might have. There is a reason we make a distinction between science and common sense. If intuition and heuristics reliably got us to the same place as the scientific method, it wouldn’t have been invented.
The original sci-show video was condescending, but this isn’t the reason why.
@Tinyvalkyrie410 If you read it as "Art is built on science" and so on, then I don't think you would disagree.
No hate to Hank or the team at SciShow whatsoever. We all make mistakes, and if you've been around here long enough, you'll know that I've made a fair few of them in the time of this channel too.
Still... what are science educators to do, if not roast one another in friendly spirits, once in a while? 🔬
I would deeply like to see science educators do friendly, good natured, diss tracks to each other.
they make gross mistakes about things constantly their research is typically very shoddy.
What "mistakes" are you talking about? You've only disagreed about your preference of term use and strawmanned their vaguer claims.
@DarrenMcStravick go back to doing "debates" with those you have a vague understanding of. knitting is not your craft.
@DAYBROK3 Narcissistically gatekeeping knitting and conversations about it isn't going to generate the adoration and respect you're craving.
You very eloquently addressed the points that bothered me about the SciShow video in this vid. Thank you for coming to the defense of knitters' honor 😂
Glad I could be of service! 😂🪡
Yeah you did a marvelous job here.
@newmoonjlp - 2025-09-06
Oh Hank honey I love you but... oof. So many missed opportunities. Just let me show you the magic of short rows while you stand there and tell me knitters don't have a grasp on physics.
Sexism is definitely part of it, but there is a tendency in general for modern scientists to gloss right over the immense achievements of their forebears in developing complex mathematical systems, architectural achievements that amaze us to this day, hydrological miracles to make the desert bloom, the list goes on and on. All apparently discovered by accident, largely by brown people, who had no "technology" whatsoever.
@KristineVike - 2025-09-06
A very good point, and one I should have emphasised in this video as well. Thanks for pointing it out!
@AuntyKreads - 2025-09-06
Oh yeah racism and sexism and classism!! (Many working class men knew how to knit and mend certainly through WWI and WWII)
@JustSaralius - 2025-09-06
I was gonna comment that colonialism should be added to the sexism, but this expresses it better than my brainfoggy brain can muster atm. 😅❤
@Unicorn_Rancher - 2025-09-06
Yes! This!
@SnakebitSTI - 2025-09-06
I don't disagree that the tendency exists, but I do think it's important to note that a lot of the people doing research on fiber arts are doing so because they are both scientists and fiber artists themselves. Talking about scientists as if they simply don't understand knitting is just mirroring the mistakes of the SciShow video when it talks about knitters as if they don't understand science.