A controversy among three people I usually have no interest in paying attention to raises fascinating ethics issues.
Joe Rogan is a giant in the podcaster universe despite having risen to fame as the host of the disgusting reality show “Fear Factor” and having little education beyond high school. Last week he had Robert Kennedy as a guest on his show to his Presidential run and his views as an anti-vaxxer. Dr. Peter Hotez, one of the more obnoxious and arrogant scientists with an addiction to the media spotlight tweeted to his 400,000+ Twitter followers that the podcast was “nonsense” and “misinformation.” This prompted Rogan—who is a giant in the podcaster universe because he knows how to “stir the pot”— to challenge Hotez to come on his show and debate Kennedy (or, failing that, Rogan), offering to give $100,000 to a charity of Hotez’s choice if he agreed. Hotez refused, saying that scientists don’t debate ignoramuses and charlatans (or words to the effect), Elon Musk tweeted in to support Rogan, and pundits left and right began taking sides.
The episode immediately called to mind the battle between Holocaust historian Deborah E. Lipstadt and Holocaust denier David Irving, a story recounted in the film “Denial.” Lipstadt took the unshakable position that a debate on this topic automatically gave dangerous credibility to a position that has none. If there is a debate, she reasoned, then uninformed people will think, ‘So—maybe the Holocaust happened, and maybe it didn’t!’ “Some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive, ” her character, played by Rachel Weisz, says in the film. (Maybe that’s an actual quote from Lipstadt, but I can’t find it.)
I agree completely with this reasoning when it involves historical facts with no legitimate or credible facts or interpretations opposing them. Even with history, “truth” is often not as clear-cut as it seems, or once seemed. In the case of science, this uncomfortable reality is magnified exponentially. The aspiring totalitarians among us have weaponized “science” and “experts” to claim that their nostrums for improving the human condition and moving society toward utopian ideals are correct and unquestionable, and push the myth that it is a mark of stupidity or stubbornness to challenge “settled science” and “scientific consensus.” This, ironically, ignores the kind of historical facts that Lipstadt champions. “Settled science” and experts have been proven not just wrong, but spectacularly and often disastrously wrong repeatedly throughout civilization. We just went through a vivid example with the Wuhan virus. (Lipstadt, or “Denial’s” screenwriters, signaled their confusion on this point by including “the icecaps are melting” in her list of indisputable facts). Debating scientific assumptions and conclusions is not the equivalent of debating whether the Holocaust occurred.
There is still validity to the argument that a debate is not the best or even a responsible way to inform the public about a complex issue and the various factors contributing to policy disagreements. Debating is a talent and a skill: the fact that a particular point of view is held by the more skilled debater doesn’t mean that individual’s position is correct. Robert Kennedy Jr. is a lifetime public figure, advocate, activist, speaker and, some would say, demagogue. Rogan is the master of his domain. Hotez communicates relatively well for a scientist, but he’s no Carl Sagan. Public confidence in vaccines shouldn’t be shaken because their advocate in a debate looks like Hotez and wears a bow tie. Having a politician and amateur vaccine sleuth debate a scientist is like William F. Buckley debating Muhammad Ali (which he did—and lost!) It might be entertaining, but the degree of enlightenment will be dubious at best.
Naturally, as an agent and enabler of those who want their experts and settled science to be unassailable and unassailed, the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump ridicules the idea of debates on such matters, writing in part,
“Perhaps the most important factor, though, is the internet’s reinforcement of the idea that people can become experts on anything by “doing their own research.” Often this simply means substituting the views of an actual expert for the views of someone who is questioning the expert, rewarding the perhaps innate sense in people (and particularly young men) that they know better than the people who are telling them what to do. Without this sense that anyone can reach conclusions about complicated issues that are as valid as those of people who’ve spent years studying the subject, though, this call for “debate” immediately collapses… There’s a corollary here, of course: the decreased confidence Americans have in institutions and expertise. It has been useful for various actors — snake-oil salesmen, politicians, criminals — to cast authority as suspect and unreliable. It has been easy to cherry-pick examples when that has been the case, maligning authority in general.”
Ugh. Bump is such an intellectually dishonest ideologue. One doesn’t have to “cherry-pick” to find myriad examples of abused expertise and authority, or cases where the experts were dead wrong and all one needed to see it was solid critical thinking skills. Society, business, entertainment, the professions, government—all have been periodically shaken to their roots and transformed by curious dilettantes and amateurs who were not bound by conventional wisdom, ossified bias and arrogance and who challenged “settled” assumptions.
Here’s my favorite: today baseball has completely different statistics than it did 40 years ago. It is played differently and talent is evaluated differently, and all of that arose from the open-minded analysis of a baseball fan with no experience playing the sport but a remarkable ability to look at problems with a fresh and probing perspective. That iconoclast, Bill James, published a little newsletter in his basement that regularly challenged the “settled” consensus about baseball, and his theories and conclusions were widely ridiculed by the baseball establishment in pretty much the same terms that Bump uses. The funny thing is that James was right and was able to prove he was right. Eventually, all of the experts had to admit it.
I don’t think Robert Kennedy is right about vaccines. I did a lot of work debunking anti-vaxxers when I ran a public health care education non-profit, and I have a strong bias against the Kennedy dynasty, so I am conditioned to discount his motives and positions…but people like him sometimes discover aspects of accepted “truth” that aren’t true after all. I also have had enough dealings with experts, authorities, doctors, scientists and academics to know that many of them are full of themselves and also, as Joe Biden would say, malarkey. These abuse the trust the public and policy makers place in them.
Taking the opposite position that Bump does, environmental studies professor Roger Peilke Jr. wants to see Kennedy and Hotez debate, in part because he seems certain that Hotez would mop the floor with RFK’s eldest. Peilke, as a climate change warrior, naturally believes that “settled science” must prevail. He writes,
By participating in a debate, Hotez would send the following message:
“I disagree with your views and I can explain why in clear and accessible terms. I am not fearful of engaging, because I know my stuff. Nor do I view you to be contemptible and not worth engaging. We are fellow citizens and can model constructive disagreement. I respect you as a participant in American democracy, but I am certain that your views on science and policy are harmful to the nation.”
By not engaging, Hotez instead sends this message:
“You are a crank and not worth my engagement, except from afar. I will challenge your views only from the safe ground of politically friendly media. If you challenge me in response to my criticisms of you I will hide behind the cloth of “science.” My authority and status, and that of all science, should be more than enough to command your deference. Listen to my friends, who agree with me.”
As we consider this episode it is essential to understand that Hotez is not doing science — he is participating in democracy. Ultimately, for experts “science communication” is not about sharing facts, but about making peace with democracy. Engagement may not change hearts and minds, but it may win them.
On balance, I am drawn more to Peilke’s conclusion than to Bump’s (but then I am almost always repelled by Bump).
I’m still far from certain which approach wins in the risk/reward calculation. I suspect that the answer depends on the controversy at hand. Evolution vs. Creationism is an easy “Sure: debate.” The Holocaust is an easy “No.” Vaccinations?
Ethically, a very close call.
Ethics Alarms 
This was about all I needed to read:
“Dr. Peter Hotez, one of the more obnoxious and arrogant scientists with an addiction to the media spotlight tweeted to his 400,000+ Twitter followers that the podcast was “nonsense” and “misinformation.” ”
You are on Twitter. You spout conclusions about scientific conclusions, but you won’t debate ignoramuses because that is not what scientists do.
No?
No, they just spout their beliefs using the mode of communication that is the least conducive to the formation of a complex thought.
And back down when challenged on his assessments of scientific positions.
He deserves ridicule.
-Jut
I belong to a forum that discusses various aspects of WWII based upon the Axis powers. By necessity, this forum includes sections on the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Holodomor, etc. The rules of this forum are strict: you can question details and individual accounts of these events but you cannot deny they happened.
Taking that into consideration, I don’t think the issue here is vaccinations in general. I disagree with RFK, Jr on the overall subject of vaccinations. I do not, however, have any problem debating the effectiveness and the controversy around the COVID-19 vaccinations, including the way the vaccines were developed, handled, maligned before Trump lost the election, promoted the heck out of after he lost the election, mandated by businesses and by businesses under government pressure.
Real Auschwitz survivors questioned the narrative of Oprah’s guests who claimed to have survived the camp together and exposed the truth. I applaud that because hoaxers, when they are inevitably exposed, give ammunition to the deniers so hoaxes must be discouraged. Weaponized science must also be exposed where it exists – not because the conclusions are wrong necessarily – so that such a practice can be also discouraged in the future due to the credence it gives to the claims of its deniers.
Just my two cents.
I understand that Kennedy is identified as an anti-vaxxer but what is the resolution to be debated? Are we talking about vaccinations against childhood diseases such as MMR or polio or are we talking about something else like the J&J or Pfizer Covid jabs?
If we push vaccines to eliminate risk due to individual behaviors then I am not sure that eliminating risk makes sense if it enables continued behaviors that create the risk. These might include HPV vaccines or the new HIV vaccines that provide less risk to the non-monogamous. With respect to HPV, Pharma is pushing parents to get their teens inoculated against this STD instead of having them reinforce the consequences of promiscuous sexual activity. We always seem to fall back on the rationale that they will do it anyway so let’s protect them from themselves. This is exactly the same rationale that led to the explosion of teen pregnancies and abortions. The social cost of that is quite high
I think if the latter I would welcome the exchange however, we have sufficient data to demonstrate that public health is served with early childhood vaccinations so such a debate would simply muddy the waters with disputable data.
I suppose the better question is where we draw the line on what vaccines should be mandated for public health and which should be voluntary based on the individual’s risk/benefit assessment. At some point, the risk to the individual could outweigh any societal benefit.
I agree that the discussion should be nuanced and framed around the concept of relative risk. Some childhood diseases are quite deadly and contagious, and the risks posed by vaccines are probably outweighed by benefits of preventing those diseases. The MMR is a good example.
Other diseases are deadly but only pose a danger to a certain subset of children. Hepatitis B is only spread through sexual contact and sharing needles? Why do all infants need to be vaccinated within days of birth for a disease that only affects a tiny portion of children with irresponsible parents? The risks are not offset by any benefit for most kids. Are we just trying to avoid asking parents if they are promiscuous heroin addicts? Is that benefit really a good enough offset for the risks involved?
There are trade offs for every decision, and taking away the opportunity for people to weigh those trade offs themselves because you think most people are to stupid to evaluate the risks properly is excessively condescending.
The topic of vaccination is a hard one to discuss, in person, online, in a debate, or otherwise. There is a lot of presupposition involved in the discussion. Speaking to one person, in one way might have me come across to them as someone who wants to inject methylmercury directly in an infant’s brainstem. With another person, or said only slightly differently, and everyone is going to believe that not only do I think that a vaccine will cause autism, but the dissolution of civilization as we know it. The problem is that the topic of vaccination requires a degree of nuance that people just don’t seem to want to listen to.
The first thing is to say that vaccination has helped society a lot. We can all be grateful for where we are. I am mostly up on my vaccines, as are my children, and I say this to emphasize where I stand on the whole anti-vax platform. My next point is that there are many people who cannot follow a proper debate and determine who won, so a formal debate may not be the best choice.
However, there are questions that should require legitimate discussions, even if not debate. Flu vaccines have recently dropped in effectiveness, by about half of their previous value. Around the same time, pharmaceutical companies argued for a new way of calculating effectiveness. The new method produces results approximately similar to what the old way did, before the big drop. So there appears to be no change. Now, did the change appear to mask the problem or was the timing just coincidental because this new, non-intuitive method really is better? That is a reasonable area for debate.
In regard to the HPV vaccine, there are some issues. It has a slightly elevated risk of complication compared to some of the other vaccines, and HPV can be avoided if you don’t engage in sexual activity. This is a parenting/behavioral issue, not a vaccination one in many eyes. In addition, HPV is easily curable with antibiotics and some doctors say that if you are sexually active outside of marriage, you can avoid the cancer by routine screening and appropriate treatment. We have seen teen pregnancies and STDs go up when “safe” sex is promoted rather than abstinence in country models, but in US state models, the opposite is seen. This is worth discussing.
Hepatitis B vaccine at birth makes little sense as I have heard it explained. You don’t get this as an infant, unless your mother has it, and given the sheer amount of blood testing that the mother gets, it is highly unlikely that the child will get it. In addition, the child is highly unlikely to be shooting up with unclean needles, or having sex until a much later age. Most of us will never encounter another person who has Hep. B. and are even less likely to sleep with them. This should be an older person’s vaccine. We should discuss this. I could be convinced that there is a reason for this, but you’d have to give me something other than, “well it’s safe because we say so and so we’ll do it.”
Even the Tetanus, Pertussis, and Diptheria vaccinations should be discussed in public forums. There is a decent amount of data that shows that since the reformulation, this vaccine has changed from once completely eradicating your chance of getting the diseases (within the 5-10 year time frame) to making it so that you do not get symptoms but carry the disease anyway. There is some strong correlation between this and the outbreaks of pertussis in the very young, since everyone is masking their pertussis until an infant comes into contact with the infected who, through vaccination, does not even know they are infected. The infant then, unexpectedly, comes down with a severe and often fatal case of pertussis. When tracing back most of these pertussis outbreaks, there have been cases where every single person the infant has seen their whole lives has been vaccinated. Now, the other side of the discussion says that the vaccine weakens faster than expected, and that we should get our booster shot every two years instead of every five to ten. I know that when my children were born, I was strongly warned not to let a single person near them who had not been vaccinated against pertussis in anything more than 24 months until my child was two months old and had received the first shot. Some doctors go so far as to say 6 months is the minimum age a child should encounter another human who has not had a pertussis shot. There are similar, if less excitable debates regarding the MMR and the propensity of it to actually hold off measles or just decrease symptoms. I think these are worth discussing.
I personally am quite concerned with the flu vaccine, the HPV vaccine, the vaccine for Hep B, and even the Tdap and MMR. My family is vaccinated against most of these, because I still think that is the better choice, but I always used to be a very strong proponent of vaccination, but somehow the issues that keep cropping up are dismissed without discussion. If we cannot discuss how reformulations for decreased side effects may have unintended consequences, then we have lost any reason to trust these scientists, doctors, and pharmacologists when they assure us that everything is well. If we can’t ask why we get certain vaccines at certain ages that seem illogical, then why should I trust the “experts”? If I can’t ask about the necessity for a vaccine for a disease that is behavioral in nature, or ask about why they changed their efficacy calculations to something that is quite a bit less straightforward, what trust can or the rest of the public have?
There is nothing inherently wrong with stating, “I am unskilled at formal debates, but I would be willing to meet with you and have a discussion about your concerns, even on national TB.” Even a holocaust denier could be talked to on national TV and most logical people would come back with an understanding why we know it happened. The idea has more legitimacy with the denial of proper discussion than it would get by someone agreeing to defend the certainty that the holocaust happened. We have seen people deny and shut down enough real concerns (see AUC) that any time a concern is shut down with “because science says so” it automatically throws the “science defender” off the deep end of the Cognitive Dissonance scale, and raises the “conspiracy theory” to possible relevance. We need these discussions. The solution to bad speech is more speech. The solution to stupidity is intelligence explaining what IS stupid.
“Even on national TV.” I meant television, not tuberculosis, though my fingers apparently were stuck with communicable diseases.
Who here listened to Kennedy’s position in the audios referenced?
When I listened, he hardly sounded like an antivaxxer… I found for myself that I could not substantively disagree with what he had to say(all my kids are vaxxed to the max).
As mentioned in a previous comment the position/question to be debated would clarify the ethicality of a debate.
Debating a noun would be useless beyond fun to listen to on Rogan.
I was watching something recently on vaccines, where a few things stood out, including the Hep B thing, and Tetanus.
What struck me is the number of certain cases of things were listed pre requirement were a low number, especially in a nation of 100M plus (depending on when the vaccines started). If the data presented were correct, and the source was apparently the CDC, the number of cases were only in the low thousands (I want to say it was tetanus, but maybe it was a couple different things…). That’s an infinitesimally small percentage of people affected, and now shots are mandated. That seems stupid. And the Hep B thing is ridiculous on it’s face. No way that should be mandated for every single person. What I didn’t see was the number of people with (serious) side effects as a result of 100s of millions being vaccinated vs the number of cases that would be low even without the vaccines. If the first rule of medicine is “do no harm” that has to be factored in to any “mandate”.
One of the points he point of that exercise was to “follow the money”. The pharma companies are making dough when the customer base is in the 100s of millions. The fallout from lawsuits is peanuts compared to the revenue – speaking of which, there was another assertion that pharma was granted immunity from suits at some point, which apparently “coincided” with the growth in the number of mandated vaccines. Relative to the latest vaccine mandate (that is now not mandated… huh, wonder why?) I believe they were granted immunity on the Chinese virus vaccines as well. Mandates = lots of dough = limited expenses against that dough, and wow.
Part of that presentation also included a reference to an increase in the sheer number of required vaccinations that are now on the list (from just a half dozen or so, to what looks like in the 10s of different vaccines), the growth of which occurred since the 90s or so, and the increase in the number of allergies to common things (peanuts, gluten, etc) that were just unheard of when I was a kid (born in 66). Given that meds WILL have side effects, and the more meds in combination the greater the possibility of side effects, and the fact all of this is mandated?
Debates on all of this should not stop at just one; the more debates the better – if it’s a matter of the debater’s skill, we can “average out” the outcomes and increase the data available to offset “the skill of the debater”, etc. Call it the herd immunity effect of debate. Too often we’re listening to (or, were, up until the fiasco the last few years) the “expert” institutions that have conflicts of interest.
It is flat unethical to not have the debate.
Except for scientific laws, irrefutable evidence-based outcomes, and scientific principles. i.e., gravity, laws of motion, combustion requires fuel, oxygen, an ignition source, etc. I don’t think there is such a thing as settled science. If settled science exists, what are the criteria that we should use to claim the science is settled? Who determines the science to be settled? Is there a mechanism to unsettle the science if someone comes up with new findings? The answers to my questions are the same. Don’t know. Labeling something as settled science is a condescending dodge.
I concede policies should not be crafted based on the debating skill of debaters. I also believe there should be peace on earth. People should not murder other people. Politicians should speak the truth and keep campaign promises. Now that we have that out of the way, what is the alternative to debating various scientific principles? Blind acceptance?
I am a strong supporter for debating scientific hypotheses and conclusions. New discoveries are continually being made in many scientific fields. Also, we seem to be regularly hearing of new studies proclaiming this or that. Many of those new discoveries may or may not be valid as is pointed out in multiple studies.
Beware those scientific studies—most are wrong, researcher warns
One reason so many scientific studies may be wrong
Two studies cast doubt on credibility of medical research
We continually hear that climate issues are settled science. Many policy decisions, regulations, and laws are based on models. When constructing a model to predict the future, the researcher must use various assumptions in the construction of the modeling program. Basically, the models are only as good as the assumptions made to construct the models. Additionally, Wally Broecker, a pioneer of climate change research, didn’t believe the science was settled as is pointed out in his 2019 obit. I knew and worked for Wally back in the early 1970s. He was not an alarmist; he repeatedly stressed that he believed in his theories but that there was still much to learn.
Wallace Broecker, Prophet of Climate Change
The debates should involve the discussion of the evidence that supports each debater’s position and the conclusions the debaters make based on the strength of the evidence. With medicine, I put faith in large, well-controlled, double-blind studies. Many studies don’t meet all three of the criteria.
I offer a challenge. We frequently hear we should eat whole grains and organic products because they are healthy and good for us. I would like to find one credible, well-controlled study that proves whole grains and organic foods actually increase a person’s longevity or even quality of life beyond someone feeling proud of themselves because they think they are eating healthy. For the record, I enjoy some organic products because of their taste, not their perceived health benefits.
Looks like I didn’t format the links properlySecond try:
Beware those scientific studies—most are wrong, researcher warns
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-beware-scientific-studiesmost-wrong.html
One reason so many scientific studies may be wrong
https://phys.org/news/2016-10-scientific-wrong.html
Two studies cast doubt on credibility of medical research
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-01-credibility-medical.html
Wallace Broecker, Prophet of Climate Change
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/02/19/wallace-broecker-early-prophet-of-climate-change/
Jack,
WordPress my links correction is spam. please help.
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