Pseudoscience, Subterfuge, and Civil Resistance

With each passing day, the United States federal government introduces yet another policy that threatens, rather than promotes, the health and wellbeing of the American people. A prime example is the recently enacted federal budget bill that makes severe cuts to Medicaid funding, cripples the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and limits the extension of the premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to January 31, 2026. As a result of this legislation, millions of Americans will lose their health insurance coverage in 2026, and many will experience food insecurity, with the likelihood that their health will be at risk. While these avoidable consequences are troubling in themselves, even more disturbing are the underlying motivations that seem to be driving them, most notably a blatant disregard by elected members of Congress for the welfare of citizens, particularly low-income families, in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. 

Federal policy actions involving public health show a similar disregard for the wellbeing of citizens and have been characterized by a relentless assault on science and truth led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has defunded valuable cutting-edge biomedical research, dismissed experts from federal health advisory committees, and launched scientifically questionable studies in the face of counterfactual evidence, exhibiting strong elements of pseudoscience and political subterfuge. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, subterfuge is “deception by artifice or stratagem in order to conceal, escape, or evade.” Counter to promises made to Senator Cassidy at Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, vaccine skeptics now hold¹ key roles in DHHS and Kennedy remains aligned with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization he founded, that is seeking to upend the childhood vaccination schedule and abolish vaccine mandates.²

Pseudoscience has been defined as “a pretended or spurious science; a collection of related beliefs about the world mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method or as having the status that scientific truths now have.³ It is “a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific”⁴ and “consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be scientific or factual but are inherently incompatible with the scientific method, and is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims.”⁵ Pseudoscience also relies on confirmation bias (the tendency to search for and favor information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values).⁶ In addition, it lacks openness to evaluation by experts as well as structured practices for developing hypotheses, and it often is marked by stubborn adherence to false claims long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally disproven.⁷

Under Secretary Kennedy, DHHS has been engaged in the dogged pursuit of pseudoscience to discredit COVID vaccines, particularly those employing mRNA technology. Despite a mountain of evidence showing no demonstrable association between vaccines and autism, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website now states that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Moreover, Kennedy has cited scientifically flawed studies to support his claim that Tylenol use in circumcision⁸ is tied to autism, and he recently launched a $50 million Autism Data Science Initiative at the National Institutes of Health⁹ based on his unsupported theory that environmental exposure is responsible for autism. It would appear that Mr. Kennedy simply cannot accept the possibility that naturally-occurring neurodiversity may be at work rather than vaccines, certain pharmaceuticals, and environmental factors.

For decades, the United States has been the beneficiary of a “brain drain” of talented scientists from other countries. However, in the past year, we have witnessed the beginning of a reverse flow, with US scientists increasingly being lured away to Canada, Europe, and China with promises of generous research funding and academic freedom of choice.¹⁰ Experts warn that this trend will worsen, leading not only to the US’s diminished ability to conduct breakthrough research but also a decline in the integrity of scientific research and the reputation of long-respected entities such as CDC, NIH, and FDA.¹¹

How, then, can public health and medical professionals and researchers counter the dual threats of flawed science and deceptive messaging? One strategy is to engage in civil resistance—a form of action that relies on the use of nonviolent resistance to challenge a particular law, government action or discriminatory policy for the purpose of achieving political or social change.¹² It involves collective action, which may include protests and noncooperation, to challenge unjust or harmful policies and to influence the status quo. Civil resistance has its roots in Henry David Thoreau’s 1866 treatise, Civil Disobedience, whose core message—that individuals have a duty to follow their own moral compass rather than blindly obey laws or majority opinions that are considered unjust—encourages citizens to challenge the status quo and become active participants in their government. Such resistance can stir the public’s conscience and highlight the injustice of the law or policy to a wider audience. The “3.5% rule,” a political science concept developed by Professor Erica Chenoweth, suggests that a nonviolent protest movement that achieves peak participation from 3.5% of the population has never failed to create change.¹³ This rule is based on historical data of civil resistance movements, demonstrating that large-scale, nonviolent action can lead to systemic change, with success rates being double those of violent campaigns. The rule, though, is not a guarantee; other factors such as organization, leadership, and sustainability also play critical roles, but coordinated, collective action by many individuals is the key.

How does this strategy translate to the field of population health? It will be extremely challenging to convince 3.5% of the US population to demand change in federal government health policies, but these are extreme times and there are tangible actions that can be taken to galvanize public opinion against the status quo at DHHS. I suggest here three tactics that may be adopted in concert with one another:

• Speak out regarding critical issues affecting health. Population health dies in silence. Various public health leaders and medical professionals have publicly denounced Secretary Kennedy’s misguided decisions and harmful policies, calling for his resignation or removal from office.¹⁴ It is imperative that all members of the public health and medical communities step up and lend their voices to these protests, whether the issue is vaccine safety and effectiveness, the loss of health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the ACA, the cuts to SNAP funding, or the disgraceful termination of grant funding for breakthrough biomedical research. Social media as well as traditional media sources should be used to broadcast appropriate messages to the public. An “activated” citizenry is a necessary prerequisite for altering the current status quo.
• Change the nature of the narrative and associated messaging. Accentuating the positives of scientific, evidence-informed decision making is always essential, but it also is crucial to not allow false statements and misinformation to go unchallenged. Misinformation about vaccines, new drugs, and treatments spread by unreliable sources and biased influencers is a public health menace. “Alternative” facts that are known to be untrue or unsupported by evidence must be challenged and refuted, even though credible political science research has shown that it is very difficult to correct misinformation.¹⁵ For example, the fallacious link between vaccines and autism has had an unusually long and persistent life span fueled by charlatans and self-serving influencers, but nonetheless must be countered with objective evidence.
• Resist harmful or discriminatory federal government policies by coordinating and implementing evidence-based policies at the state and/or local levels. In the absence of sound guidance from DHHS and other federal agencies regarding various health issues, state policymakers should consider developing collaborative efforts with other states that would collectively protect the health of all their citizens. A recent example is the decision by California, Oregon, and Washington to reject the ideologically-based vaccination directives from the CDC, and instead form a “health alliance” to coordinate vaccine recommendations for the three states.¹⁶ The alliance will provide residents with scientific data about vaccine safety and efficacy, and will issue guidance on vaccines for respiratory illnesses like Covid and influenza, as well as an array of childhood immunizations. Collective action of this kind can play a vital role in countering the harmful effects of pseudoscientific decisions by CDC and other federal agencies that value ideology over science.

Civil resistance to neutralize the threats to population health posed by Mr. Kennedy and his associates will require concerted action. It cannot come soon enough. With each passing day, it becomes increasingly evident that new leadership at DHHS is urgently needed before the damage already inflicted (and the dangers still yet to come) prove irreparable.

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