Knitting & Physics: The SciShow Controversy

In 2023, I decided to pursue certification as a Master Hand Knitter from The Knitting Guild Association.

I’m currently working my way through Level 2 of the 3-Level Program (Level 1 takes a year, Level 2, 18 months, Level 3, 2 years).

One of the assignments required to complete Level 2 is to research and write a brief history of knitting.

Imagine my surprise—and eventual dismay—when Hank Green’s SciShow YouTube Channel recently released a video entitled “Physicists Don’t Understand Why Knitting Works.”

Green is, among other things, a longtime YouTuber and “science communicator.” He and his brother, John, have a large following on TikTok.

Green has also made a small fortune designing websites and YouTube-funded channels focused on making learning in general—and learning about science, in particular— engaging and fun.

That is the ostensible purpose of SciSchow: to “explore the unexpected” and “delve into the scientific subjects that defy our expectations and make us even more curious.”

SciShow’s recent video has turned out to be more than a little problematic, though.

To put it bluntly, it got knitting wrong. Repeatedly.

Referring to stitches as “knots,” it argued that knitters knew little or nothing about what they were doing when they were knitting… until the physicists came along (in 2025).

Knitting does not produce “knots.”

Knitting has, however, been analyzed in terms of “knot theory” in mathematics, and engineers and computer scientists (and others in other STEM fields as well) have been examining the applications of knitting and knit fabrics for a wide variety of scientific uses for quite a few years now.

If you call a stitch a “knot,” the knitters will come for you.

In knitting, “knots” refer to something very specific, and are often controversial, in part because a knot affects a fabric in a way that stitches do… not. (See what I did there?)

Knots are also characteristic of nalbinding, an ancient form of fiber artistry from which historians believe knitting eventually evolved.

Quite frankly, the history of knitting is both fascinating and enigmatic: we don’t know a whole lot about its origins, but we’re pretty certain they lie in the Middle East.

When you knit, you work across the stitches by moving from right to left, a characteristic of reading that is the reverse of what we do in the West. So logic suggests that if Westerners had created knitting, we’d work from left to right.

The SciShow video did correctly identify some of the earliest forms of knitting and their origins.

However, the video then posted a picture of a basic knit stitch (reverse stockinette) and identified it incorrectly—a first-minute-of-the-first-day-of-Knitting-101 kind of mistake.

The video also posted an image of a “knit fabric” that was actually woven.

Weaving is an entirely different fiber art, with very different origins and applications, that produces a very different fabric— a second-day-of-Knitting-101 kind of mistake.

(Sidebar to the knitters: hey, at least it wasn’t a picture of crochet that they identified as “knitting.”)

Green’s SciShow video asserted that historically, knitters worked from “intuition” and mere “trial and error,” understanding little or nothing about how or why fabrics behave in the ways that they do… until The Physicists finally arrived on the scene!

There’s a whole world of knitters and knit wear designers who would be laughing at such an assertion, if they weren’t currently so pissed off by what they’re watching and hearing in the video.

The SciShow video also openly acknowledged that any physicists watching probably weren’t “all that excited” about knitting, but just you wait, guys!

Because of course, no physicist would ever already be a knitter?

Hm. Interesting assumption.

Herein lies one of the overarching problems of the video: in broad brushstrokes, it seemed as if Hank Green was “mansplaining” knitting—in a video that included serious errors about knitting basics, and also omitted information about centuries of fiber artistry (much of which was conducted by women and people of color).

And so, not long after the video dropped, The Knitters came for Hank Green & SciShow’s “knitting and physics” video.

Kristine Vike, a knitter with a Ph.D. in environmental chemistry, offered a concise, point-by-point breakdown of the problems with SciShow’s video, which I think is worth watching.

What I found more… troubling? depressing?… was the response that SciShow offered in the comments section on their video.

A woman named Jess identified herself as a knitter and then proceeded to “talk through some of the gaps in the video.” (Many Knitters noted that it was not cool to send a knitting woman out to defend a mansplaining video about knitting.)

Acknowledging that there were mistakes in the SciShow video, Jess argued that knitters make mistakes all the time, that SciShow videos are “worked on by numerous people” and that “most of them aren’t knitters, so some technical mistakes did make it through to posting.”

She argued that “a mislabelled [sic] visual … doesn’t invalidate the trustworthiness and value of the science lessons in this video.”

To me, the implication here seems to be that as long as the mislabeling didn’t affect the science portion, it really isn’t that big of a deal.

I beg to differ.

If I posted a video of a particle accelerator and simply referred to it as a “dome,” the physicists would come for me—and rightly so.

The remainder of Jess’s rationalization for the SciShow video consists of defending the SciShow team and the choices they made on the grounds that the video was all a big “experiment.”

WHO KNEW knitters might actually watch a video about knitting and physics?

Anyone who has a YouTube channel knows that the algorithm will push out content based on keywords.

So if you use the keyword “knitting” in your title, thumbnail, or description, YouTube will push your video out to others who have expressed an interest in knitting.

So I for one don’t believe for a minute that the team at SciShow didn’t know that.

I think that SciShow didn’t really care, because they weren’t making a video about physics and knitting for knitters—it was for people interested in science.

They mistakenly assumed that, as the (racist colonialist) Rudyard Kipling put it, “Never the twain shall meet.”

SciShow rationalized the “simplifying language” they used in the video as a means of making it “accessible to a general audience.”

Speaking as a “humanities communicator” (I have a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and a 30-year career as a professor of literature), I would argue that one of the first things any educator or “communicator” must do is think through the implications of how they are presenting their content to their chosen audience.

Just because you aren’t making a video for knitters, doesn’t mean you get a pass when it comes to getting basic information and facts about knitting correct.

When I taught introductory classes, I always had to consider and adjust the language that I used when teaching my students about a particular topic.

But that didn’t mean that it would be okay if I inadvertently misrepresented the topic at hand, or simply went in and replicated a host of biases and stereotypes.

As a comparatist, my goal is always to make people curious about BOTH SIDES of any comparative topic at hand.

So I would argue that, if you make a video about knitting and physics, you need to try to spark curiosity about both knitting AND physics, particularly if that’s the stated goal of your YouTube Channel.

You don’t phone it in on one topic in order to exalt the other, because if you do, you risk engaging in all kinds of problematic pedagogy.

And this is what made me really sad about the SciShow video: it seemed to me that the scant “research” about knitting that they conducted was largely shaped by confirmation bias.

When I watch the SciShow video, I get the impression that, deep down, whoever worked on this video thought that knitting is just a cute little hobby, where people (usually grannies?) inexplicably enjoy making funny little things like socks and scarves (that the rest of us just sensibly buy in stores), but hey—wait! Physics! Okay, now we’re talking… take it away guys!

I base this impression in part on the fact that Hank Green’s latest app, “Focus Friend” has a cute little bean who “knits”—if by “knitting” you mean that the bean pokes sticks into what looks like a fluffy cloud.

If you stay focused, this bean, who admittedly “loves to knit!” will generate a pair of socks, which earn points that you can trade for furnishings to decorate the bean’s room.

If you purchase the premier version, the bean will make scarves.

Knitters have pointed out that scarves are actually far easier to make than socks, and no one in their right mind would trade a pair of hand knit socks for a cheap lamp… but I digress.

If you don’t stay focused, the bean “drops its stitches” and the whole knitting project ends.

In knitting, dropping a stitch is actually not a big deal. As you learn on Day 3 of Knitting 101, you just keep calm and … pick it up.

After all, it’s not like it’s a KNOT or something.

In her defense of SciShow’s video, Jess argues that the mistakes made are like those knitters often make when knitting: a knitted garment can have errors, but still be wearable.

Well, yes… that’s true.

Unless, of course, it turns out that those errors are so major that the thing you made looks bad and/or doesn’t fit.

Sometimes you can’t know or don’t realize that until you’re finished knitting it, but most knitters will warn you (based on experience) that thinking, “Oh, well, I’m sure it’s FIINE” and blissfully carrying on is often a recipe for disaster.

In knitting, once you know you’ve made a mistake you have two choices: “frog it” (knitting slang for when you “rip it, rip it”) and fix it.

Or, if you don’t discover the mistake until it’s too late, you live with it, if you can. (Pro tip: A hand knit sweater that won’t fit over your head—or anyone else’s—can be hard to live with.)

It looks like SciShow is opting to live with their flawed video, on the grounds that “knitting doesn’t have to be complex to be worthwhile.”

Of course not. After all, it’s not like knitting is rocket science.

Oh, wait: it kinda is, though, isn’t it?

According to SciShow’s own video title, knitting is actually a kind of fiber-focused “rocket science” that physicists don’t yet understand.

But hey, by the same token, we don’t need to know how to add, subtract, multiply, or divide in order to appreciate numbers…

Or do we?

In the end, knitters had one resounding comment for SciShow: you can do better.

Personally, I think that’s a fair response.

Unfortunately, it looks like knitting is simply being dismissed as a quirky and largely irrelevant hobby…

Again.