RFK Jr’s Legal Problems
Maybe we should worry less about the training he doesn’t have and more about the training he does
Imagine that RFK Jr is an associate at a major law firm and has been hired by the Vaccines Cause Autism Foundation to sue vaccine manufacturers. He begins by assembling a team of physicians and/or scientists who can pass as experts and are willing to testify that vaccines cause autism. He tasks them with pulling together any evidence that supports the case. Preparing for a case of that magnitude would be a daunting undertaking and, even with a huge team and unlimited financial resources, it might take several months. To be on the safe side, let’s give him five.
Everything about this, from the time frame to the nature of the team Kennedy would assemble sounds like the plan he announced for a federal program to find the cause of autism. Nothing about it sounds like science. We all know that he has no training in science. We forget that he trained as a lawyer. Determine what you want the jury to decide and make your best case. He is not the lead scientist. He is the lead prosecutor and he is certain he has the guilty party.
If he really wanted to find out the cause of autism, the scientific process would look something like this:
1. Assemble a team of top neuroscientists, epidemiologists, toxicologists, developmental neurobiologists, and other scientists who have studied the etiology of autism.
2. Ask them to review all available research, determine what we know for certain about the causes of autism as well as areas of uncertainty.
3. Based on their report, issue requests for proposals for research to address gaps in our understanding.
4. Bring in expert panels to review those proposals, plan, and fund new research.
5. Lather, rinse, repeat.
All of this will reduce our uncertainty about causes, but the causes of disease that are non-infectious and not purely genetic are rarely known with certainty. Autism is a complex aggregation of developmental disorders with multifactorial etiology.
Science takes time. Good science and scientific certainty takes even longer.
Every scientist who has ever done biomedical research understands that this is how science advances. If you are trained like a lawyer, however, you start with the conclusion you would like to see, e.g., my client is innocent/not liable, or the defendant is guilty/liable and proceed to filter evidence through that lens.
We have seen that sort of conclusion first approach to science repeatedly during COVID with disastrous consequences. Several of those conclusion-forward “scientists” are now in leadership positions at HHS and are facilitating Jr’s legalistic approach to science. In fact, two of them flanked him as he announced his autism moonshot. They should know better. It won’t end well.