The toxic nature of “debate me, bro” culture

Dan Dezner has a good blog about how even if the resistance to things like RFK Jr.’s war on vaccines is able to mostly hold the line — far from a guarantee in itself — there is a huge opportunity cost to pretending there is any legitimate “debate” about things like the effectiveness of the polio vaccine:

The most disruptive part of RFK Jr.’s ascension has been his hostility to vaccinations. RFK Jr. has articulated the belief, for example, that vaccines are the cause of autism. Last summer he told Fox News host Jesse Watters “I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.” Trump’s nominee to be the next head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention holds this same belief. In recent interviews Trump has said something similar. And last week we learned that “the lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine,” according to the New York Times’ Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

These are not examples of vaccine skepticism — they are literally attempts at vaccine denialism. But I would be willing to bet that the folks in the Guardian story would be enthusiastic about this kind of disruptive behavior. This is certainly what Republican Senator-elect Jim Banks told CNN’s Manu Raju over the weekend, stating, “This country is ready for a big debate about vaccines.”

A lot of prominent Trump supporters are big fans of the “let’s have a debate!” approach to challenging epistemological givens. Surely, they argue, if the proponents of the expert consensus are correct, they should not be afraid to debate that point in a transparent manner.

Now in some instances there might be some probative value in agreeing to such discourse. But when it comes to vaccines and public health, there are two big problems.

First, even agreeing to a debate can be spun as a political concession. The very structure of a debate is that both sides possess at least some validity to their positions. There are times, however, when the science is sufficiently settled such that the debate can be closed.

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Agreeing to a debate on this topic is like agreeing to a debate about whether the Earth is flat. Even if there is no scientific evidence to support such an outdated worldview, the idea that a debate should be had can be enough to sow doubts about the current consensus. The entire upside to the debate strategy rests with the the conspiracy theorists.

The second problem with agreeing to a debate is that it is not cost-free. Energy and time spent on defending concepts like, “vaccines are good” cannot be devoted to other questions of public policy. Instead, advocates pushing crackpot ideas get to extend the Overton Window. Even if, for example, the debate about the polio vaccine goes nowhere, it becomes more politically acceptable to say, “sure, some vaccines are important, but surely reasonable people can agree that we should continue to ask questions about health risks to our children from so many vaccines.”

At best, “opening up debates” on critical questions where the evidence is in fact settled wastes time and energy that could be used to address other problems. But every DEBATE opens up major downside risk, and I think there’s good reason to think we’re going to see some of those too.