Fear, Spectacle, and Science

Part 1: The Hearing That Wasn’t a Conversation

Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. testified before the Senate Finance Committee. He was questioned about his agency’s agenda, plans for vaccine updates, and his controversial decision to fire the head of the CDC. On paper, it was supposed to be an oversight hearing — a chance to examine policy decisions with serious implications for public health. In reality, it was far from that.

Here’s the thing: I don’t usually watch these hearings. Like most people, I tend to catch the soundbites later on social media — the five-second clips designed to grab our attention. That’s how the system is built. Senators only get five minutes each, and let’s be honest, the goal isn’t real dialogue. The goal is spectacle. A rehearsed question, a snappy response, and boom: you’ve got your clip ready to post.

The reason I felt compelled to watch the full three-hour testimony this time is because Secretary Kennedy Jr. — and others like him — scare me. Not because they ask questions (asking questions is good), but because they flatten complex issues into simple stories that serve their narrative. They selectively choose data to support their argument and dismiss any evidence that contradicts it. They thrive on oversimplification. They thrive on fear. They thrive on identity. And it works.

If you want to read more about my thoughts on MAHA, check out this post I wrote a while back:

Hearings like this aren’t about dialogue or discussion. They’re about creating a “gotcha” moment — that viral clip. But what gets lost is the nuance. How do you meaningfully discuss vaccines, public health policy, or research integrity in five minutes? You can’t. These are politicians, not scientists, and unfortunately, this was a political event, not a scientific one. Complexity gets reduced to slogans, and science becomes a prop in political theater.

To be clear, the critiques directed at Secretary Kennedy Jr. were absolutely warranted. His pattern of cherry-picking data, stoking fear, and flattening complex science into simple narratives demands serious accountability. The issue wasn’t that Senators challenged him — it’s that the hearing format turned those valid critiques into soundbites. Instead of dismantling misinformation with depth, it became another round of political theater.

And here’s where the experience got even stranger. As I sat down to watch, YouTube fed me a steady stream of ads: erectile dysfunction “cures,” weight-loss promises, Viagra pitches, and one particularly unsettling warning for men to avoid “feminizing foods.”

Those ads weren’t random background noise. They were part of the same problem. Just like the hearings, they thrive on oversimplification and fear. They tell you that if you just buy this pill or cut out that food, you’ll be strong, healthy, “man enough.” They prey on insecurity and weaponize hypermasculinity. This is how wellness culture blurs into conspiracy theories.

Here’s the reality: reading and interpreting research is hard. It’s a skill. It takes training, practice, and humility. Even then, the best scientists disagree. They revise their positions as new evidence emerges. That’s not weakness — that’s science doing what it’s supposed to do. The problem arises when we, lacking training or being inexperienced in this skill, overestimate our ability to interpret complex things.

Fear sells better than nuance. Fear says, “trust the easy answer.” Fear tells us the loudest voice must be the right one. And when fear becomes the foundation for healthcare decisions — whether through ads or political testimony — we all lose.

There’s no five-minute soundbite that can undo that. And maybe that’s the real lesson here: if we want to live in a culture that takes science seriously, we have to learn to live with complexity. We have to demand more than spectacle. We have to be humble enough to say, “I don’t know it all. And the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

Check back next week as we dive into why we overestimate our understanding of complex topics, explore the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and see how it helps explain why conspiracy theories are so tempting.