> He claims that an uptick in autism incidence is correlated with a lot of environmental things, one of them being that the number of childhood vaccines has increased

That is a factual lie. That is not what he said.

In 2005, he wrote an article (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2005-pt10/html/CRE...) that was published in Salon - since retracted by the publication, but never disavowed by him - in which he said, among other things:

> It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts... that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real.

The idea that thimerosal in vaccinations causes autism, or any other neurological problem, has been thoroughly debunked by every serious researcher who's ever looked at it. I'll just link to Wikipedia's page on the topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_and_vaccines) since that's easier than collecting the same list of sources again, but you can ask the CDC, the WHO, the NIH, etc., etc.

> There is plenty of academic literature around [ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine]

Yes, and all of it points to them having no effect on COVID. Sources: Mayo Clinic (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...), NIH (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/12053/), WHO (https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/cor...).

> I'd imagine the same thing is true about seed oils

So you know nothing, much like RFK. You're right, the situation is the same: there is no actual evidence, and this is a nonsense meme that's been spread on social media by non-experts. There are fewer academic studies, because the panic about seed oils is newer (and therefore there hasn't been time for academia to exhaustively disprove it), but that's not how this works: if you're making the extreme, uncommon claim, the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence, not on the rest of the community to disprove it. Sources: American Heart Association, citing a professor of medicine at Stanford (https://www.heart.org/en/news/2024/08/20/theres-no-reason-to...).

> every talking head that mentions RFK makes it look like he's just some weirdo that thought up all of these kooky ideas

This is also a lie. This is the fourth or fifth time you've said this in this thread, and it's not true. Nobody, neither on this thread nor in the wider media landscape, thinks he invented them himself. Everyone knows he's parroting random memes or conspiracy theories he found online. That is not an excuse.

> I (and respectfully, probably most of the commentariat) aren't actually qualified to tell you either way.

You're right! That's why I trust the actual medical experts, who categorically disagree with RFK and his ilk, and tend to describe them as "quacks", "cranks", and "misinformed". If you are as unqualified to judge the evidence as you say you are, then the only even remotely logical response is to rely on experts to interpret it for you. Why are you trusting some random person with a a famous last name over every single medical researcher? Do you apply this logic to any other topic - "I'm not an expert, therefore, instead of listening to the experts, I'll listen to the first person I see talk about it on TV"?

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There is a reason why people abbreviate this whole conversation to "brain worm" and move on. Nothing RFK says about health is founded in reality. It is all crank nonsense, and it takes a special kind of gullibility or motivated reasoning to believe it when the actual sources are right there, just a Google search away. He's the equivalent of the schizophrenic who stands on the corner screaming about UFOs and bodysnatchers, just with slightly more decorum. In order to even believe that he's acting in good faith, let alone that he's right, you have to be willfully blind to evidence that is right in front of you. You have to choose to believe one weirdo over the entirety of modern science. That is simply not how intelligent people behave.