The Misdirection Magicians

By Elizabeth T. Jacobs. PhD

“Misdirection—or direction, as some magicians prefer to call it—is the subtle, deceptive art of directing an audience’s attention towards one thing (a magical effect) so it does not notice another (the method or mechanics of a trick)”.

-Master Class, What Is Misdirection in Magic?

In April 2025, the Magician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared onstage at the largest venue at which he had ever performed. For decades, he had been confined to smaller stages with audiences already primed to be tantalized by his illusions. But now, he had been invited to perform before the entire world, and he announced his greatest magical trick of all: “In September we will divine what has caused the autism epidemic and we will magically eliminate those exposures”. Would he be able to produce something new about autism spectrum disorder that decades of research by expert scientists had not? Time would tell. 

The Magician’s invitation to the global stage came from the only illusionist more powerful than he, and now was his opportunity to hypnotize more people. In the time-honored tradition of the charlatan, he laid the groundwork for his revelation by calling the experts who saw through his act “horrible people”, and claiming that they were “killing children and did not care”. 

The Magician’s advertisements claimed that he, and only he, offered safe harbor from these alleged fiends, providing entry to a gauzy, fantastical realm, far away from scientific facts and offering the warm, enticing comfort of believing that the uncontrollable could be controlled with the right spell. They would be able to stop their child from developing autism, because he had something up his sleeve that no scientist had ever before seen.

The audience waited. Those who had already succumbed to the illusion were joined by more and more people, as the Magician continued to portray those who refused to join his simulacrum as “corrupt”, and continued to peddle his faux alternative. Those who rejected it were cast out, for they endangered the false hope he had conjured. 

Would he be able to present his audience with the hidden key to the cipher of autism, a solution that he said no scientist on earth had ever found? Would he be able to sustain the spell over his audience? For the experts had not gone quietly. They too had spoken loudly, wielding science forged of facts and evidence to try to puncture the bubble of shared delusion. Misdirection might be in order; therefore, another of his tricks might have to be pulled from his trunk. 

At last it was time for the Magician to reveal his greatest trick. And so, on the global stage he appeared for his performance, with second billing to the greatest illusionist of them all. They were joined by apprentice Magicians who had not yet reached the same success but had sold their souls in an attempt to do so. 

The Great Illusionist fogged the stage with vague assertions about pain and pregnancy and vaccines and acetaminophen. He made pronouncements about that which he could not himself pronounce. He manipulated the audience and readied them for the next performer. 

The Magician stepped forth and began a brief incantation about vaccines, but this was not his focus, so he reached into his hat and pulled out acetaminophen and held it high. Look over here, he said. Some of his believers did not like this. They had been dazzled by his previous vaccine trick and were not interested in a new one. But the Magician had backup from the lesser performers. 

Apprentice Makary took the stage and pulled scarves from his sleeve, chanting a list of studies that showed an association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism. But Apprentice Magician Makary’s day job as a physician required something else of him, so when the show was over he performed a sleight-of-hand and admitted that acetaminophen does not cause autism. 

The Great and Powerful Oz offered another misdirection to hide the fact that there was nothing behind the curtain, promoting a potion called leucovorin that he had previously helped sell. But he, too, could not maintain the illusion once he left the stage, and admitted that there was “limited evidence” that his potion would work.

The show was over. The Magician and his apprentices had done their best to make a vision appear in front of eager believers, when outside of the illusion it was clear that nothing new had been produced. All that they presented was a façade.  

As the audience discussed the performance it became clear that what each person saw was fully dependent on the geography of their thoughts. Were they inside the delusion or outside of it?  

The Magician will continue to do everything in his power to fence in his believers and ward off the dissenters. But the illusion is fragile, and it is only a matter of time.