“We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world. By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Said RFK Jr., at a Cabinet meeting last Thursday, quoted in “Experts Doubt Kennedy’s Timetable for Finding the Cause of Autism/The nation’s health secretary announced that he planned to invite scientists to provide answers by September, but specialists consider that target date unrealistic” (NYT).
Why did he phrase it like that? I do not get the “by September.” I could believe that scientists could be chosen to report their best ideas by a particular deadline and that a fact-finder could declare an answer, the way a court, after hearing evidence, could resolve an issue for the purpose of ending a dispute. But that’s not the same as knowing.
I note that he did not say we will know what causes autism. He said we will know what has caused the autism epidemic. Perhaps we will know — or have a pretty good answer to the question — whether the increased numbers are caused by more people seeking the diagnosis, or a changing standard in giving the diagnosis, or some substance (or combination of substances) in the environment, or (to quote Kennedy) “different ways of parenting.” To seek a cause for the epidemic is to ask what has changed. But a lot of things have changed over the years.
Plenty of people were already worried that RFK Jr. was not firmly rooted in science. His “by September” statement stokes that worry — and makes me think he likes to tweak the worriers.