Donald Trump is back. Depending on your disposition, that sentence may fill you with feelings of dread or triumph. The implications of Trump’s comeback on immigration, the economy, the war in Ukraine and myriad other issues are highly unpredictable due to the President’s variable temperament and political positioning. But one thing is clear – Trump’s reelection unmistakably established the naturalistic fallacy as one of the main influences on American policymaking.
The naturalistic fallacy (similar but distinct from David Hume’s famous ‘Is-Ought’ distinction) is a broad set of ideas which share in common a belief that natural products are inherently superior to those produced by human design. Manifestations can range from the relatively harmless personal choice to consume organic vegetables rather than those grown with pesticides, to much more damaging crusades like the Unabomber’s attempt to terrorise society into deindustrialisation.
This worldview is described as a fallacy because it is empirically untrue. Industrial farming and food production, for example, have helped to lift billions of people out of subsistence – something that could never be achieved by communal allotments and vegetable gardens. The world is slowly winning the war against cancer because of game-changing pharmaceutical products with scary chemical names, not thanks to herbal teas. Criticism of the naturalistic fallacy is not a crusade against natural products nor is it an endorsement to ‘rationally’ plan human society with ‘scientific’ methods. It simply highlights that natural products are not inherently superior because they are natural, nor are man-made products inherently inferior because they are not.
Yet, Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr to be Secretary of Health and Human Services is a confirmation that a flawed worldview has worked its way into the highest echelons of the incoming US administration and the American Right more broadly.
Kennedy, who ran for President as both a Democrat and Independent before endorsing Trump, has peddled some of the most outrageous misinformation on vaccines. This includes alleging that the US government and media are conspiring to cover up the truth around pseudoscientific claims of a link between vaccines and autism, as well as advancing the idea that Covid-19 vaccines were ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews from their supposedly harmful effects, although he claims these comments were taken out of context.
RFK’s anti-vax position is part of a wider philosophy which sees advanced technology as inherently dangerous while promoting natural alternatives as inherently superior. A rabid environmentalist, Kennedy claims that nuclear power is dangerous despite clear evidence that it is one of the safest and most powerful means of power generation at our disposal. He instead argues, as he does with vaccines, that the case for nuclear is part of a grand conspiracy initiated by faceless, nefarious lobbyists.
Indeed, his fervent environmentalism is one of the things that should make him an uneasy fit for the Trump administration and Republican voters. For his entire career, Kennedy has taken up causes which are traditionally associated with the American Left, including environmentalism, tackling wealth inequality through government redistribution and supporting Democratic Party candidates. In 2016, he described Trump and the MAGA movement as ‘a threat to democracy’ and compared them to Hitler and the Nazis. For his entire life, he has been a Democrat, just like his more accomplished family members.
The only thing that RFK has in common with the MAGA movement is his conspiratorial mindset. In addition to vaccines and nuclear power, conspiracies pervade his views about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Embracing the naturalistic fallacy is part of that conspiratorial worldview. When your prior belief that man-made products are inherently dangerous flies in the face of scientific and economic evidence, you must resort to conspiracy theories to explain why so many are widely adopted with seemingly positive results.
Conspiracy theorising and embrace of the naturalistic fallacy are not unique to any particular political groups. Before Trump, conspiracies about nuclear power, foreign wars and vaccines were traditionally associated with the far-left in America. Many of those aligned with some of Kennedy’s radical ideas in the United Kingdom are well-educated centrists rather than cranks on the Left or Right. Kennedy’s claims about food are the clearest examples.
When it comes to food, we see a clear synthesis of Kennedy’s naturalistic and conspiratorial worldviews. He claims that ‘Ultra-Processed Foods’ (UPFs) – a highly nebulous term that encompasses foods from chocolate and sweets to wholemeal bread and hummus – are ‘poisoning’ American children. He rightly points out that high consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, salt and saturated fats do make Americans less healthy. But among his other targets are seed oils and food colourings, which he links to cancer, heart disease and a host of chronic illnesses.
Contrary to Kennedy’s claims, most empirical literature finds little wrong with seed oils as part of a balanced diet. They are high in unsaturated fats which are better for heart health compared to saturated fats. A systematic review found that consumption of the maligned Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids often found in seed oils are not associated with elevated inflammation that can trigger chronic conditions.
Kennedy’s disdain for certain synthetic food colourings is based on claims that they cause cancer and behavioural problems in children. The popular breakfast cereal Froot Loops is one regular target of his ire for being heavy on dyes. Much of the anti-Froot Loops crusade is based on a study from the University of Southampton in 2007 which claimed to show a link between certain food dyes (including the ‘Yellow 5’, ‘Yellow 6’ and ‘Red 40’ colours found in Froot Loops) and hyperactivity in children. But this study had myriad flaws, including a small sample size, failure to adequately separate different tested ingredients and relying on subjective assessments of ‘hyperactivity’.
Despite these flaws, the Southampton study and similar research have impacted regulations in the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia which all ban or heavily restrict the use of these dyes. By contrast, American regulators have generally insisted on much stronger evidence about the health harms of food additives before outlawing them and restricting choices for consumers. It is possible, even probable, that some are more risky than current evidence suggests. But the burden of proof should be on those who want to restrict consumer choice – inconclusive research and naturalistic biases do not satisfy that burden.
Conspiracism and naturalism, whether propagated by online cranks or public health experts, are harmless in and of themselves. But when there is a real chance of them being translated into policy, the costs are born by everyone through higher prices, fewer choices and diminished innovation. It is certainly true that certain man-made products that we consume carry health risks.
Robert Kennedy has ascended to a dangerously powerful position because his worldview, rooted in conspiracy theories and the naturalistic fallacy, fit perfectly with Donald Trump’s political base. Thankfully, the United Kingdom doesn’t have a similarly influential movement. But that certainly doesn’t make us immune. Attempts to extend taxes and restrictions on ‘Ultra-Processed Foods’, the panic about post-Brexit chlorinated chicken imports and the UK’s exceptionally burdensome regulations on building new nuclear power capacity are just a few examples.
People across the ideological spectrum must be vigilant in ensuring that these bad ideas don’t infect our politics as they have across the pond.
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