NEWSROOM

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD reviews Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s science-deficient podcasts about psychiatric medications and longevity hacks. The whopper is treating anecdotes as scientific evidence.

RFK Jr recently announced that the prevalence of obesity in America has dropped by 2.5%. He didn't explain where he got the statistic, said it happened under Trump, and implied it had to do with Americans' diet. What RFK Jr did not talk about was the rapid rise in consumption of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.

RFK Jr refuses to warn the public about the risks inherent in consuming raw milk and has said the FDA is suppressing access. As Secretary of Health, however, he has not yet tried to dismantle the federal ban on inter-state sales, and now says raw milk sales falls to the states. Why has he changed his tune?

RFK Jr. recently launched Moms.gov, a pro-natalist website to "foster healthy pregnancies."The website is the whopper because it is full of misinformation, omissions and deception. It also papers over the many Trump administration policies that endanger women’s health and put children at risk

RFK Jr. told Native American tribal leaders that Type 2 diabetes is curable through diet. His message of personal responsibility is overly simplistic and disregards the social determinants of health and diet and the critical importance of access to healthcare in preventing and treating diabetes.

RFK Jr has been silent as the Trump administration dismantles the federal loan programs which, for decades, ensured Americans could pursue careers in health. A better Secretary of Health would have fought to ensure the country has a vibrant and well-trained health care workforce.

Decades of research show no link between modern migration and the spread of infectious disease to host populations, but that didn't stop RFK Jr from blaming immigrants for communicable diseases in his testimony to Congress. His falsehoods increase stigma, discrimination and healthcare barriers faced by immigrants and refugees.

RFK Jr. is unhappy that one in six American adults takes an antidepressant and believes that the U.S. faces a dependency crisis, driven by overmedicalization. The idea that reducing the use of drugs will solve our social, institutional and neuropsychiatric problems is a whopper.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade. But in a series of congressional hearings last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. misleadingly claimed that “there are no cuts to Medicaid” as a result of that 2025 law.

Defense Secretary Hegseth announced the flu vaccine will no longer be required for U.S. service members. RFK Jr. defended the decision, down playing the vaccine's effectiveness and claiming soldiers should have some medical "freedom." It is worrisome that the Secretaries of Defense and Health are willing to compromise both service members' health and U.S. military readiness.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kennedy often calls out moms as his biggest supporters. His message to women sounds like praise and empowerment, but he's actually shifting the burden of evaluating scientific studies onto moms. That’s unfair and dangerous.

Senators Sanders and Cassidy objected when Secretary Kennedy claimed, in a Senate committee meeting, that "if you want to talk about why disease mortality disappeared in the 20th Century it was not vaccines." RFK Jr. distorts the historical medical record to support his ideology. The decline in infant and childhood mortality in the 20th Century was not due to vaccines alone, but new vaccines dramatically reduced death and disease due to infectious disease and saved millions of lives.