Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Didn’t Used to Be This Way. His Path Is a Warning.
For decades, he was a superstar environmental lawyer who demanded that Americans should accept and act on the scientific consensus that climate change is real. He specialized in cases in which corporations had hidden the environmental or health costs of their products. His legal work against corporations that dump toxic chemicals in water, waste dumps, and food saved thousands of people from disabling diseases or death. He embraced the science that revealed this and attacked the superficially exculpatory science used by the companies to defend themselves. “That’s what I do for a living,” he told an interviewer. “I litigate scientific issues.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was not always a crank. He was not always a notorious promoter of pseudoscience and of conspiracy theories. But for years now, he has been the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine activist. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, he campaigned against the new vaccine, opposed masks, and promoted discredited cures such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. More than 300,000 of the 1.1 million American deaths from COVID might have been prevented by the vaccine he relentlessly crusaded against.
A well-known optical illusion shows a drawing that can be seen as a beautiful woman, perhaps a model for an angel, or as an ugly old woman, a caricature of a witch. The drawing is either or both. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., too, is either pro-science or anti-science, an environmental angel or a conspiratorial monster. Or both.
The way Kennedy himself would tell the story, there is no conflict in his beliefs. “Science, at its best, is a search for existential truth,” he has said. The problem only arises when “greedy corporations and captive government regulators,” his go-to villains, “twist, distort, falsify, and corrupt science, hide information, and censor open debate to protect personal power and corporate profits.”
In March 2023, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, forcing a wider public to grapple with both sides of his character. After a pandemic in which “follow the science” became a battle cry, we have to try to understand how someone can embrace science yet aggressively reject the science that most actual scientists believe in. How can someone be both a steel-witted lawyer and a crackpot? The story of a man with a famous name and startling strength in early polls shows why we ignore that question at our peril.
Kennedy is perhaps best known today for his disdain for vaccines—he’s called the COVID-19 shot “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Where did his doubts come from? Such “skepticism” can start with reasonable questions, and from the viewpoint of the early 2000s, concern about the safety of regular childhood shots was not an entirely crackpot notion.
In 1998, British physician Andrew Wakefield had published an article in the Lancet reporting on a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and rapidly rising rates of autism. In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service had released a statement urging vaccine manufacturers to remove thimerosal—a mercury-containing preservative—as quickly as possible and advising pediatricians to postpone giving most newborns the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. Although the aggregate amount of thimerosal that children received in vaccines had rapidly increased, the Environmental Protection Agency had dragged its feet on enforcing federal regulation of mercury.
Big, bad companies putting stuff in products that harm people while governmental agencies do nothing, all backed by “science” provided by the companies themselves—it was familiar territory for Kennedy. He knew only too well that the fossil-fuel industry had publicized studies to confuse the climate change debate, and that all too often regulatory agencies had been “captured” by the very industries they were supposed to regulate. “I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly,” Kennedy claimed in 2005 in “Deadly Immunity,” a widely read article published jointly by Rolling Stone and online by Salon, noting that the eradication of early childhood diseases depends on inoculations. But he had come around to the idea that some of the vaccines on the market were dangerous. “If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine.”
Even in 2005, Kennedy’s concerns about vaccine safety were overstated, and over the next 10 years most of the remaining concerns about vaccines were laid to rest. Thimerosal was removed from almost all vaccines. Autism rates still continued to soar, though, suggesting that the linkage between thimerosal and autism had been spurious. Wakefield’s articles were retracted, and Wakefield himself was accused of fraud and lost his license to practice medicine. Epidemiological studies consistently found no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. An overwhelming body of evidence supporting the safety of vaccines in common use accumulated. By 2011, both Rolling Stone and Salon had retracted Kennedy’s 2005 article.
Science, or any practice that relies on evidence, routinely includes “shifts” in what is seen as “truth.” John Maynard Keynes, questioned about why he had changed his views on an economic question, is famously supposed to have replied, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s answer was to double down on his beliefs. He continued to insist that vaccines were dangerous. To maintain his position, however, he had to insist that the evidence supporting vaccine effectiveness and safety was not only wrong but outright fraudulent. Perhaps the tendency to go down this path had been there all along.
In his judgment of the conflicting claims on vaccine safety, Kennedy was not a scientist, but a litigator. To be a good scientist is to acknowledge uncertainty. “Truth” is never final, always about likelihoods and not about certainty. Conclusions and theories are always changing, constantly subject to challenge by other scientists. Debate among scientists with knowledge and expertise in the area of dispute takes place, mainly in the form of written articles. The scientific method itself—lab experiments, clinical and epidemiological trials, and comparison of data to theory—provides the mechanism for resolving these conflicts. “Truth” emerges over time (sometimes a long time). “Questioning the science” is what scientists do.
The legal system, meanwhile, does not seek ultimate “truth”—it seeks only a resolution of a dispute. In the civil cases Kennedy specialized in, the standard for decision is not “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but “the preponderance of evidence.” A claim must have more than a 50 percent chance of being true. The decision is made by a judge or a jury, based on evidence presented by lawyers. The job of the lawyers on each side is not to weigh conflicting science objectively: Cherry-picking and spinning evidence, minimizing the opponent’s evidence, making ad hominem attacks on the credibility of those presenting contrary evidence, and using the rhetorical skills of the lawyers are part of how you win a case. The outcome is a binary resolution with a consequence (liable or not liable), not a judgment of the scientific debate.
Kennedy’s views about how to evaluate the validity of conflicting scientific evidence were shaped by long-standing and deeply ingrained suspicions based on his own experience as a lawyer. He was only too familiar with secrecy and bad faith on the part of large corporations, corporate capture of governmental regulatory agencies, and the willingness of some scientists, at least, to willingly serve false masters. He was a master at presenting the strongest version of his client’s case and challenging the “facts” brought by the other side.
This can be an enormous force for good when it comes to life-and-death matters: Science moves slowly, and scientists can be prone to clouding declarations with uncertainty. A steady and firm judgment call in the face of a mishmash of evidence can, at times, improve the well-being of communities. But even when Kennedy was using his legal skills to protect the environment, not everyone was comfortable with how far he took his version of the reality. George Rodenhausen, who had worked with Kennedy as legal counsel for Putnam County during negotiations over the New York City Watershed, told the New York Times in 2000, ”I think he separates himself from good science at times in order to aggressively pursue an issue and win.” Robert Boyle, a former colleague of Kennedy’s at the environmental organization Hudson Riverkeeper, recalled, “I came not to trust him.” He added: “He shoots from the hip. Whatever comes into his mind becomes the truth.”
A degree of paranoia and conspiratorial thinking can be seen as an occupational hazard for lawyers. A lawyer is supposed to be suspicious, supposed to be wary that someone is out to get their client, supposed to be aware that an innocent mistake could come back to haunt them. “It’s not your imagination that someone is out to get you all the time,” said psychologist Amiram Elwork, who has taught a course on the matter at Widener University Delaware School of Law in Wilmington. Lawyers are trained to be pessimists, ever on the lookout for what could go wrong. “Thinking like a lawyer” requires close scrutiny of spoken and written thought to identify any problem that may undermine an adversary’s position or create future problems for one’s client. Conspiratorial thinking is close to the surface.
Still, plenty of litigators are able to separate a view they are arguing in court on behalf of a client from their own views, as well as to update their beliefs on scientific matters over time. Whether Kennedy’s days as a superstar litigator helped entrench a certain mode of thinking, or a tendency toward self-assuredness helped him become a superstar litigator in the first place, that is not the whole story. Something further happened with Kennedy.
It is tempting to call someone who espouses such a wide variety of pseudoscientific beliefs and conspiracy theories “crazy.” But there is nothing unusual, much less “crazy,” about belief in pseudoscientific ideas and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are held by people you know, people whose ideas you trust, and by leaders you follow; they are held by people you regard as intelligent, kind, and caring, by people who you would be surprised to learn believe anything of the sort. One 2019 poll found that nearly 80 percent of Americans believed in at least one unscientific idea; another a few years earlier reported that half of the American public consistently endorsed at least one conspiracy theory. Without putting much faith in the exact numbers, it is clear that such beliefs are widespread.
Belief in pseudoscientific ideas and conspiracies is not merely a matter of lack of education, either. Twenty-four percent of Americans with a college education and 15 percent of those with a postgraduate degree told researchers early in the pandemic that it was “probably” or “definitely” true that powerful people intentionally planned the COVID pandemic. Even being a skilled scientist does not protect one from believing in wild, dangerous ideas. Two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling insisted that oral vitamin C could cure 90 percent of cancers. Luc Montagnier, who discovered the virus that causes AIDS, believed that water can retain a “memory” of its history, supposedly explaining how homeopathic “medicines” containing not a single molecule of a pharmacologically active substance can cure disease.
Conspiracy theories thrive in the context of fear, anxiety, mistrust of institutions, uncertainty, and feelings of powerlessness. They appeal to those who mistrust conventional sources of information because they represent the antithesis of the usual accounts. Kennedy himself shared in the widespread social mistrust of American institutions.
Psychologists have identified a variety of psychological characteristics that also tend to make some individuals more vulnerable than others to believing in fringe science and in conspiracy theories. As a result, people who believe in one conspiracy theory tend to believe in others. Whatever personal characteristics Kennedy may have had that made him vulnerable to seeing vaccines through the eyes of a conspiracy theorist may have made him vulnerable to believing in other conspiracies, as well.
In the 2010s, Kennedy increasingly cultivated an anti-vax following. He founded and became chairman and chief litigation counselor for Children’s Health Defense, a leading anti-vax organization which also campaigns against 5G, fluoridation of water, the use of ultrasound in obstetrics, and similar causes. In early 2017, he flirted with heading a possible commission on vaccine safety and integrity being considered by then-President Donald Trump. Beginning in 2017, he broke his ties with most of the environmental groups with which he had previously been associated.
For a while, Kennedy’s pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories remained focused on his opposition to vaccines. But then they metastasized, spreading to a broader range of health– and public health–related issues. He opposed not only vaccines but the fluoridation of water. He attacked mainstream medicine and extolled the virtues of alternative and holistic therapies. He suggested that the cause of AIDS was use of “poppers” (alkyl nitrite inhalants), not the human immunodeficiency virus, and he blamed firearm deaths on psychiatric drugs, teenage depression on aluminum in vaccines, and the rise in the number of those identifying as transgender on drugs released into the water. He claimed that Wi-Fi and cellphones as health threats and described 5G technology as both medically dangerous and part of a plan to control the population.
Once a person believes in a conspiracy theory, two key psychological factors can make it hard for them to disentangle themselves from their beliefs: First, shared beliefs bind people together. We want to believe what others who are important to us believe. To not do so would threaten our relationships with them. The beliefs become part of a person’s identity: I am a person who believes such and such. By the late 2010s, Kennedy was increasingly surrounded by people who thought as he did, and he was increasingly cut off from the environmentalist community oriented toward more conventional science.
Second, we also try to maintain consistency in our beliefs. Information that is not consistent with our other beliefs and values gives rise to an internal sense of discomfort—what psychologist Leon Festinger called ”cognitive dissonance.” Either the old narrative must go, or we must find a way to discredit the new facts so that they can be incorporated into what we already believe. Belief in pseudoscience to belief in conspiracy theories is a short step. Kennedy’s narrative became one of extreme distrust.
When the COVID pandemic came along, he was primed to see masking, shutdowns, and the vaccine as all part of a conspiracy to promote vaccine sales by Big Pharma and to justify attacks on civil liberties. The COVID-19 vaccine didn’t work (it actually caused more disease, in his view). Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were more than sufficient to deal with the COVID pandemic. Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci had held meetings in 2019 to plan pandemic mitigation measures as assaults on personal freedom. He had spent years nurturing similar beliefs, and in 2020, he had found their most potent vessel yet.
Although we can see in Kennedy’s history his two sides—the pro-science environmentalist and the pseudoscience-spouting anti-vaxxer—the latter has become dominant. And now, he is running for president.
Kennedy’s campaign for the nation’s highest office can’t simply be dismissed as “quixotic.” And his views may not disqualify him. Kennedy’s doubts about vaccines are common. Even before the pandemic, 45 percent of American adults told a 2019 Harris Poll that they had some cause to doubt vaccine safety, and 1 in 10 Americans believed that vaccines were unsafe and possibly ineffective. And we know all too well that a candidate who initially seems fringe can quickly gain support. As I write this, 15 percent of potential Democratic voters say they support him, and his favorability ratings are higher than President Joe Biden’s.
His two sides emerge in his politics, too. For the most part, Kennedy’s candidacy emphasizes traditionally “liberal”—even progressive—issues of corporate wrongdoing and responsibility, capture of regulatory agencies, and lack of transparency in business and government. We must “revitalize our health care system,” his campaign website says, and “move from a sick care system to a wellness society.” He expresses concern for civil liberties and for the impact of the war on drugs and prisons and policing on minorities and the poor.
But at the same time, he has openly courted the right. As a presidential candidate, he appeared on platforms with Elon Musk and Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, used the far-right social media platform Gab to recruit followers, and got callouts from Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon. Right-wing rhetoric slips into his campaign as well: He denounces “the Covid-era suspension of the right to assembly, trial by jury, and freedom of worship,” pushes to “seal” our border with Mexico, and toys with antisemitism and anti-Asian racism. Although he is concerned about gun violence, he opposes gun control (“I’m not going to take away anybody’s guns. I’m a constitutional absolutist”) and blames firearm deaths on those psychiatric drugs released into the water. He sees the free market rather than governmental intervention as the solution to most social problems. And he promotes “medical freedom”: the right of individual Americans to make their own health care decisions, free of governmental interference, regardless of the impact their individual decisions have on others.
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the kindly, respected Dr. Jekyll is in conflict with his dark alter ego, the impulsive, violent Mr. Hyde. Is Kennedy Dr. Jekyll, the environmental advocate who uses science to promote human well-being? Or is Kennedy Mr. Hyde, the anti-vaxxer who seeks the darkness of conspiracy theories and promotes false cures and paranoid fantasies? What do we lose when we fail to see Kennedy’s Dr. Jekyll side? Does it matter that we can at least understand the roots of his Mr. Hyde side?
All human beings, including our leaders, are full of contradictions. Thomas Jefferson was simultaneously the author of the Declaration of Independence and a slave owner. FDR liberal and union president Ronald Reagan became the hero of modern conservatism. In Stevenson’s novella, the contradiction must be resolved: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde cannot coexist. To end the conflict, Dr. Jekyll kills himself and thereby kills his alter ego, Mr. Hyde. But in the real world, a storybook ending, even a macabre one, is hardly a guide.
It is easy to dismiss Kennedy’s darker fantasies as a joke or to try to weigh them against his earlier environmental contributions. But Kennedy’s opposition to vaccines and to measures taken to mitigate the COVID pandemic contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the illness of millions. His attacks on public health measures have helped handcuff our country’s ability to respond to future public health emergencies. And his promoting of pseudoscientific ideas has furthered the growing mistrust of science, of knowledge, of rationality, of evidence, and of facts themselves.
Each one of us has a choice: We can embrace science, aware of its uncertainties and even of its failure sometimes to meet its own standards. Or we can accept pseudoscience and conspiracy theory. We can’t do both. But we have to understand how easy, how appealing, it is to go the route that Kennedy did.
To understand how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the man he is now is to understand the arc of millions of Americans as they weigh the conflicting claims of science and pseudoscience, of truth-tellers and demagogues and conspiracymongers. It is to understand the early but real potency of his campaign and the threat of what he is trying to do now. His run is no sideshow.
