RFK Jr: We need to stop trusting the experts... Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy

[Ms. Toad]

44. He's not entirely wrong on this.

Blind trust in the experts (as some on DU have expressed) would have left my daughter and me dead several times over. And trusting the experts is not how science advances.

Just two examples. For decades people with ulcers were treated with bland diets and ant-acids . . . Two scientists linked h. pylori to ulcers in 1983. It took scientists more than a decade to accept treating ulcers with antibiotics - and even longer before it was accepted that h. pylori was the cause of ulcers. A similar (r)evolution is going on in the disease my daughter has. 1993, oral vancomycin was successfully used to treat PSC (a disease for for which there is no medical treatment). The experts were skeptical for a variety of reasons (it was discovered by a practicing physician - not a researcher, and a pediatrician at that - both of which are treated skeptically in the medical community). By the time my daughter was diagnosed in 2009 there was a published report of collection of a half-dozen children treated with oral vancomycin - 100% response rate, and all but the most advanced achieved complete remission. Around a decade later, a bacteria was found in the liver/bile ducts of people with PSC - a bacteria which was responsive to vancomycin. Most of another decade has passed. Still no medical treatment. The prognosis has increased from 10 years to death or transplant to around 18 years - largely because more people with a companion disease are being tested for it so they are diagnosed earlier, but still no medical treatment. And the experts still have not accepted it as a treatment - not even on an experimental/compassionate use basis. (Some doctors will prescribe it, and it is getting easier to find ones who will - but often it is not covered by insurance.)

So I'm not one to accept trusting the experts as a feature of science. The opinions of experts are important, even persuasive. But in the medical field, science often advances when someone questions the experts and tries something new. Scientists with supportable theories - especially those with evidence (even if it is not the quantity or rigor to become the new accepted theory) are important voices to be listened to.

Now - I don't think that is what RFK Jr. means, since it doesn't match with his actions. He is systematically silencing decades of evidence and research - and the people who understand and can help build policy based on it in favor or people who support Trump's political agenda.

But just as I am critical of him for throwing out the baby with the bathwater - I am also critical of voices on our side who insist we have to trust the experts to the exclusion of considering newly emerging theories.