Neil DeGrasse Tyson has been accused of sexual misconduct by a fourth woman, who says the star scientist sexually harassed her at a party in 2010.
The woman, who remains anonymous, described the incident in a Buzzfeed News report published on Wednesday, that also includes accounts by Tyson’s three previous accusers.
According to Buzzfeed, the unnamed woman said Tyson drunkenly approached her at a holiday part for the American Museum of Natural History and made sexually charged jokes, asking her to join him alone in his office. Buzzfeed reports that the woman also shared a 2014 email she wrote to her employer describing the incident in order to discourage the employer from inviting Tyson to speak at an event.
The new accusation follows a statement from Fox and National Geographic, which jointly air “Cosmos,” and the show’s producers, pledging to investigate the previous accusations against Tyson.
“We have only just become aware of the recent allegations regarding Neil deGrasse Tyson. We take these matters very seriously and we are reviewing the recent reports,” Fox and Nat Geo said last week. The two networks declined to comment regarding the new accusation.
As first reported by the website Patheos last month and detailed further by Buzzfeed on Wednesday, the previous accusations against Tyson came from Tchiya Amet, who says Tyson drugged and raped her in 1984 when they were both grad students; Dr. Katelyn N. Allers, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Bucknell University who says she was “felt up” by Tyson at a party in 2009; and his former assistant Ashley Watson, who said she quit her job because of Tyson’s sexual advances.
Tyson responded to those accusations in a lengthy Facebook post over the weekend. In the post, he offered his account of all three incidents, suggesting that his interactions with Allers and Watson were misinterpreted and never intended to be sexual in nature.
With regards to Amet’s accusation that he drugged and raped her, Tyson wrote, “It is as though a false memory had been implanted, which, because it never actually happened, had to be remembered as an evening she doesn’t remember.”
Representatives for American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson serves as director of the Hayden Planetarium, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap. However, in a statement provided to Buzzfeed, spokesperson Anne Canty said the museum will investigate the matter “to the extent we are able to ascertain the facts.”
Tyson and his representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.