Twitter actually ruined my opinion on these individuals.
Neil deGrasse Tyson writing smug bitchy tweets about slight inaccuracies in Hollywood sci-fi movies. Painted him in an entirely different light to me
Richard Dawkins tweet after tweet of him just arguing with stupid trolls, you're supposed to be a respected academic yet here you are wrestling pigs in the mud because for some reason you feel you have to win every argument.
Are you new to the Internet? Because Tyson is hardly an outlier.
I'm not familiar with Tyson's Twitter feed, but I've noticed that lots of playful critiques are interpreted as joyless and pedantic.
The YouTube channel CinemaSins comes to mind--various filmmakers (using Twitter) have attacked CinemaSins of vicious nitpicking, even though that's the whole point of the series. Tyson even did some recordings for various episodes and he seemed fairly understanding and good-natured about the flaws he exposed.
Again, I'm not familar with the tweets in question, but I just felt like pointing out that sometimes people interpret ALL criticism as a malicious act even when it's dispassionate or tongue-in-cheek.
The world is full of "stupid trolls". If you ignore them bizarre things would happen like people starting to believe AGAIN that the world is flat.
Also making someone change his mind on the internet most of the times is close to impossible, so it's usually pointless.