| At some point, there has to be enough data. That struck me while sitting through Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s hours of testimony before a Senate committee Thursday, where time and again the potential next US health secretary defended some discredited scientific theories by essentially demanding to be proved wrong. Take for instance when Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who happens to be a trained physician, asked Kennedy if he would reassure the country that the vaccines for measles and hepatitis B do not cause autism. "If you show me data," Kennedy said, "I will be the first person to assure the American people that they need to take those vaccines." And then Cassidy did just that, reading from a study of 1.25 million children that concluded the measles vaccine has no association with autism. Kennedy countered with "a study that came out last week" that reached an opposite conclusion, referring to an observational study published not in an academic journal, but a blog. This became a pattern. Senator after senator asked Kennedy to disavow his prior statements on vaccine safety, the science of HIV, or the origins of Lyme disease. His response often boiled down to: If you can show me data proving I'm wrong, I'll change my tune and even apologize on Instagram. There are, of course, reams of data on the subject of vaccines, infectious diseases, and every other field of study that might pique Kennedy's interest. There's also, one assumes, any number of blog posts, Substacks, and studies in obscure journals that stand to dispute those data. And if you hold all of those things in the same esteem, as Kennedy would seem to suggest, you never have to accept any given scientific conclusion, no matter the magnitude of evidence. And you never have to admit you're wrong. It's a pretty effective rhetorical strategy when you're under attack in a Senate hearing. But constantly demanding more data in the face of overwhelming evidence has its limitations when it comes to the actual practice of science. "When you continue to sow doubt about settled science, it makes it impossible for us to move forward," as Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, said at the hearing. — Damian Garde | 
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