Even priests! When's the last time Neil Degrassi Tyson did any science? No he just preaches the good word for speaking fees that would embarrass you.

Did he ever do anything worth mentioning?

He sounds like a bureaucrat that just climbed the hierarchical ladder.

Neil de Grasse Tyson’s academic output is exactly what you would expect from someone did a phd then left research science. He has a few first author papers that have a couple dozen citations and a few papers where he’s only a contributor. He hasn’t written academically since then. He’s not doing active research, which may mean he’s fallen behind on the cutting edge, but that doesn’t mean he’s not qualified to talk about astronomy with the public. He has the relevant training and knowledge.

Emil Kirkegaard, whose blog you linked to, is not a reliable or unbiased source for this kind of judgement for a wide variety of reasons.

The fame x paper sequence chart was telling:

https://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/images/20100719_astron...

and, as noted, Dr Brian May is completely off the chart (fame - wise) with relatively few astro papers (just his doctorate?).

The gist of this article seems to be that Tyson is "not much of an astrophysicist" because he has too many social media followers compared to the number of papers he has published.

That kind of analysis seems nonsensical to me.

"Trust the science.", which I recall was often preached during covid lockdowns, is about as religious as it gets.

Things can get way more religious than that. For example, we can look at the science and do the exact opposite of what the data tells us.

Funny. That is what seemed to happen in reaction to covid. Data and science were routinely ignored and replaced by fear and tribalism. How else can you get people to sign up for insane never ending government mandates?