Attacks on Science: A Most Dangerous Game
The administration is playing a game – a dangerous one. The longer we play, the worse off we will be. Time to call it what it is & protect American leadership in science.
From executive orders to arbitrary firings to shuttered programs, the Administration is intent on dismantling American leadership in science, global aid, education, and more. But they won’t tell you that. The administration claims their aims are to reduce waste and increase efficiency. To some, this message will resonate (really, it does). The message is simple to digest, directed at something amorphous: ‘big government waste’.
In reality, actual governance is made possible by the actions of dedicated professionals working efficiently in mission-driven agencies that deliver programs that make positive differences in the health, well-being, and prosperity of Americans. These are programs that most people like and don’t want to cut. They work – well. It’s always the other things that should be cut, things they are not sure of, but they hear are wasteful, distorted by echo chambers that trade (and profit) in misinformation.
Today provided a clarion example.
On the same afternoon as folks rallied in Washington DC and in dozens of cities all across the United States in support of the societal benefits of science, a Washington Post team revealed that the administration intends to initiate a CDC-led study on vaccines and autism, despite ample research showing there is no such link.
It is time that we call the administration’s approach for what it is: a most dangerous game.
The game will resemble science and perhaps even be couched in the language of experts and expertise. But it will have no substance, cheap magic tricks masquerading as discovery. The game will be played by those who would disregard science because they are ‘just asking questions’ joined by those who profit from snake oil cures (or the oil of the month – cod liver) at the expense of the American public.
Perhaps the game will be cheered by a subset of Americans who have decided (for now) that spite should be valorized. Perhaps a smaller subset will continue to applaud even when their communities (and not just those of their perceived ‘opponents’) suffer as a direct consequence of having enabled the degradation of American science.
But I am not so sure.
To paraphrase the words of Bill Foster – physicist and congressman from Illinois – truth and data have built-in amplifiers. They resonate, they get loud, and the louder they are, the more their opponents have to work to control them.
This is a problem if the Administration’s mission is to stop data, evidence, and reality from getting out. You can see the problem unfolding now. As measles continues to spread nationwide with more than 200 cases and 2 deaths, it becomes harder to argue against the advice of any legitimate medical doctor or public health expert: vaccinations are safe and effective. The science is clear: families with unvaccinated children or adults should get vaccinated – now. Each time the snake oil fails and another person falls sick, those who are playing a game are compelled to come up with another ‘just-so’ story.
Which is why the intended plan by the CDC to initiate a study on potential links between childhood vaccines and autism is so disturbing.
In 2002, the New England Journal of Medicine, perhaps the most prestigious of all medical focused journals, published a large-scale study assessing the potential links between autism and vaccination in more than 530,000 children born in Denmark in the 1990s. The study found that the relative risk of autistic disorder was 8% less in the vaccinated group than in the non-vaccinated group – but this small effect was statistically insignificant. In other words, as the authors stated "This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism.”
Study after study has found the same. There is real risk to children’s lives in re-litigating the issue.
But what if the White House and the Secretary of HHS are not interested in science. What if they are playing a game? What if they want studies that will parrot the things they have sold the public? If so, then there is a price to pay & Americans will pay it.
What this means: we are at risk of moving into a period of state-sponsored pseudoscience.
If successful, this will be a period where data becomes not just inconvenient but something to suppress. A period where explanations that fit the political line should be sought and if they don’t exist (because the data does not bear them out) then they should be commissioned from sympathetic sources who can hear the music without being told.
The problem with such over politicization is that the results from junk studies will be junk science. The American people won’t benefit from legitimate, data-driven insights, instead they will be subject to talking points that will be used to advance political careers at the expense of children, families, and communities.
On the same afternoon as rallies took place throughout the United States in support of science, data, and reason, Marisa Kabas reported that NIH’s National Cancer Institute issued an expanded list of ‘sensitive’ words that require clearance before being sent out for publication – clearance presumably from political minders. The words include ‘vaccines’, ‘opioids’, ‘obesity’, ‘measles’, ‘cancer moonshot’, and more.
What is it that the White House doesn’t want science to tell us – and why?
At some level, institutional leaders in science and adjacent spaces should not interpret seemingly anodyne announcements about administrative changes to NIH, CDC, FDA and more through the lens of a new administration just implementing priorities to be more efficient. Until proven otherwise, one should plan for the worst and assume that rule changes are laced in malice.
And that is why I am not so sure the administration will succeed, even if they try to keep going along this same path.
It will become ever harder for its proponents to argue that what the White House is doing is in the nation’s interest. When clinical trials of potential new cancer drugs are stopped – who benefits? When measles spreads – how long can they push cod liver oil instead of vaccines? When food safety is compromised – who do community leaders turn to if the Administration already terminated national safety advisory committees? Once we start to recognize what this is - a most dangerous game - Americans will be forced to ask harder questions.
What happened to the scientists, their labs, and the data?
What happened to the science-driven federally-funded programs that made a difference?
What happened to the jobs, not just in science, but in all the fields supported by it?
And then we and the White House will have a choice to make.
There are simply not enough different types of snake oil to plug all the holes in a junk narrative that is falling apart. There are only so many words to censor. The word (and words) will get out. And then perhaps the White House will lose some of those who applauded to start, but tepidly, and even those who applauded loudest but are beginning to sense a doubt.
Today was important. The rallies mattered. But they are just the start. Being activated is one part. We didn’t rally today for ourselves – as scientists. We rallied because science serves the public. It matters to everyone.
That is a powerful force – far more powerful perhaps than a game.
Perhaps they should research the history of Trofim Lysenko and the consequences of Lysenkoism in Soviet Russia.
I don’t agree!