What are clear markers of a drift toward totalitarianism? A leader destroys centers of independent thought, takes control of media outlets, and puts people in charge of government agencies whose only qualification is unbending loyalty to the leader.
The latter is precisely what President Trump has done in his Cabinet picks. Arguably the most dangerous of his Cabinet picks is RFK Jr., a noted purveyor of misinformation, to head our country’s Health and Human Services Department (HHS).
Here is just one example of what a disastrous idea it was to put a quack in charge of a science agency. In his April 16 press conference RFK Jr. claimed that autism has dramatically increased. His sensationalized statement “we are in an epidemic” revealed how truly clueless he is about selection bias in statistical data, not to mention his ignorance about how the definition and understanding of autism has evolved over time. For example, Asperger’s Syndrome used to be considered a separate disorder. Now, it is on the autism spectrum.
He then indirectly continued to promote the notion that autism is caused by the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine.
How did this notion first gain credence?
British researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield and eleven co-authors published a paper in the British medical journal Lancet in 1998 that implied a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine. The study included a small, carefully selected group of 12 children with “regressive developmental disorder.” The study had no control group, a seriously flawed methodology (way too small a sample size, failure to make double-blind assignments to the study group and the control group). How this paper passed referee review and was accepted for publication is a mystery. I would certainly have given it a thumbs down. That is saying something. In my decades-long service as a referee for several American and British science journals I only gave a “Do Not Publish” recommendation twice.
Later studies done with proper methodology were unable to find any connection. Let me repeat that: no connection. With these critiques of the original paper, the results of much better follow-on studies, and after the journal editors learned that some of Dr. Wakefield’s research was funded by lawyers for some of the parents of the children who were suing the pharmaceutical company that made the vaccine, the Lancet retracted the Wakefield paper in 2010.
This has not stopped RFK Jr. from continuing to peddle groundless personal opinions about the MMR vaccine. He also announced at his April 16 press conference that he is initiating a new study of the causes of autism. That is all well and good; we need more research on the causes of autism, but we are not going to get it from RFK Jr.’s HHS, because he also said that he has pre-determined future research results by declaring that there is no genetic component to the disorder. His “researchers” will only look at “environmental triggers” (aka vaccines). This is the exact same language used by Dr. Wakefield in the de-bunked 1998 Lancet paper!
Worse than RFK Jr.’s imposition of his anti-vaccine stance on HHS is his draconian canceling of research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). These semi-autonomous agencies within HHS provide much of the medical and life sciences research funding in the U.S. This, coupled with the wholesale firings of NIH and CDC staff, has dealt a severe blow to the entire science research establishment.
Lasting damage will come from the undermining of the peer-review system. This system, built up over many decades, is the foundation on which the strength and success of American science depends. It guarantees that government funding goes only to the best and brightest. Peer-review policies and procedures are woven into every funding contract HHS and other federal science agencies grant.
And it is not just the medical and life sciences that are taking a big hit. NSF and NASA, two agencies that provide a large fraction of university science funding, have also experienced cancelations of peer-reviewed research funding. As of this writing, the national labs of the Department of Energy (DOE) have not been hit as hard (full disclosure: I have spent the bulk of my career in these labs). The DOE labs, though, have already been ordered to comply with a new Executive Order from the President that bans the use of 11 specific words and phrases. These include “climate change” and “carbon-free electricity.” George Orwell’s 1984 has arrived.
Jeff Colvin has spent his professional career as a research physicist, first at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and then at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the two US nuclear weapons design laboratories. He lives in Gettysburg part-time and is chair of Gettysburg DFA Government Accountability task force.