David Kyle Johnson

And therefore, that origin does tell you something about the prediction, the predictability of whether or not the claim is true.

Now, of course, if you had good evidence that it were true, that would trump the origins of it.

But absent that, it's a compelling argument that it's probabilistically not true, right?

Yeah, that happens so much in politics where you essentially just pack your expert panel with cherry-picked experts that all agree in one direction.

It's, again, not a representative consensus, right?

It's a manufactured consensus.

It gives the illusion of a consensus because you put your big, fat, hairy thumb on the scale and made sure that only experts who had one opinion are expressing that opinion in the venue that you're creating.

Yeah.

Yeah, so you can create the illusion of the consensus that way.

I encounter that all the time in the political arena.

Yeah, so there's a good list of questions you could ask whenever there's an appeal to expertise or quote-unquote authority.

Is it a real expert in a legitimate field?

Do they align with the consensus?

Or are they an outlier?

Is their background not relevant to their stated expertise?

And at the end of the day, is there evidence to support what they're saying?

And you are just vaccine you're talking about.

And in RFK's case, he's a lawyer.

He is used to making a lawyer's case for something, not a scientific case for something.

And he consistently confuses those two things.