Today the media will tell you that Donald Trump’s appointment as US secretary of health is a sceptic about vaccine safety. But Robert F Kennedy Jr is not a sceptic – he’s a straight-up science denier. This distinction matters, and understanding why could help all of us navigate the murky science communication environment now and into the future.
Scientific scepticism is a crucially important principle that guides scientists’ work. It involves examining evidence carefully and critically. Scepticism means being open to changing your views based on that evidence – even when the evidence contradicts what we want to be true. So a true sceptic would reject poor evidence even if it supports their views. This approach drives human knowledge forward and helps us better understand how our world works.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.
– Prof. Richard Feynman
Science denial, on the other hand, rejects overwhelming scientific evidence while only accepting data if it supports predetermined conclusions. Motivated reasoning plays a crucial role here. This is the tendency to interpret or twist information in ways that support our pre-existing beliefs while dismissing any evidence that challenges them. While everyone is susceptible to interpreting evidence in ways that support their existing beliefs, science deniers take this to an extreme. They actively seek out information that confirms their positions while working hard to discredit anything that challenges them. This isn’t the careful weighing of evidence that characterises true scepticism – it’s merely a systematic effort to protect and promote predetermined beliefs. And its a sure sign that someone isn’t acting in good faith.
This is how RFK Jr. works. When faced with scientific consensus that contradicts his personal views, he frequently turns to conspiracy theories to justify his agenda, rather than engaging with the evidence itself. He moves the goalposts. He attacks scientists who produce data that contradicts him. He performs cognitive gymnastics just to cling on to rigid beliefs even if there is mountains of evidence that contradicts his position.
You can see these performances when he promotes the thoroughly debunked and fraudulent claims linking vaccines and autism. But his mental acrobatics extend to other areas of science too. He dismisses extensive safety data on fluoride – a beneficial mineral that naturally exists in water, and outright rejects evidence on glyphosate safety. He also uses science well on occasion too – nutrition scientists have been pointing out the dangers of highly processed foods for decades, for example. Likewise he understands that humans are the cause of climate change. In this way he sees science as a tool for good when it suits him but the source of evil when it goes the other way.
But this isn’t just a nuanced point about semantics. The distinction between scepticism and denialism matters because labeling science denial as “scepticism” gives it false credibility. This is something the media should be very careful about.
RFK Jr isn’t a sceptic or someone who has useful contrarian ideas, and the media shouldn’t claim that he is. He is a now powerful man who has a well-documented history of attacking the truth and accepting lies to further his own personal agenda. And if journalists are genuine about holding power to account then they need to call him out for what he really is. He’s not a sceptic, he’s just throwing science to the dogs.
Dr. Matthew S. Nurse