John J. Pitney, Jr.

The new president has a fondness for “alternative facts” that goes far beyond estimates of vote fraud or crowd size. As the headline of a Scientific American editorial put it during the campaign: “Donald Trump’s lack of respect for science is alarming.” A few examples make the point.

In 2014, he tweeted: “The U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our `borders.’ Act fast!” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists all the Ebola cases diagnosed in the United States: a total of four.

In 2015, he said of global warming: “A lot of it's a hoax, it's a hoax. I mean, it's a money-making industry, OK? It's a hoax, a lot of it.” NASA recently reported: “Earth’s 2016 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880.”

“If I take hair spray, and if I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer?” he asked last spring in West Virginia. “I say, no way, folks. No way, OK? No way.” Yes, way: Scientists told Factcheck.org that gases sprayed inside will eventually get outside. The EPA says, “The emission of ozone depleting substances has been damaging the ozone layer.”

Now that Trump is in the White House, such attitudes will have consequences. A leaked document suggests that there will be changes in the way that the EPA uses science. One might guess that EPA scientists are worried that the changes will undercut pollution control, but we cannot know for sure because the administration has ordered a media blackout for the agency.

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Trump’s science denial is especially troubling when it comes to autism. For years, he has propounded a discredited theory about the origins of the condition. In 2007, he said: “When I was growing up, autism wasn't really a factor. And now all of a sudden, it's an epidemic. Everybody has their theory, and my theory is the shots. They're getting these massive injections at one time. I think it's the vaccinations.”

Study after study has disproved any connection between vaccines and autism. Scientists are still studying the roots of autism, and many possibilities remain, but vaccinations are the one purported cause that they have definitively ruled out.

Nevertheless, Trump has kept at it. The Trump Foundation gave $10,000 to an anti-vaccine group led by former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy. During the campaign, he met with former British physician Andrew Wakefield, lead author of a fraudulent 1998 article that helped give rise to the vaccine-autism myth. Just before he became president, he met with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of the late senator and a leading proponent of the myth. Kennedy said that Trump had asked him to head a presidential commission on “vaccine safety.” A Trump spokesperson said that nothing was certain yet, but that Trump might name a commission on autism.

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With Trump getting his autism information from the likes of Wakefield and Kennedy, such a commission would surely not advance the cause of medical science. Trump has openly dismissed medical expertise. In a 2014 tweet, he said: “I am being proven right about massive vaccinations — the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.” Think about that. He somehow got it into his head that vaccines cause autism, so he insists against all evidence that he is “being proven right” about the subject and accuses the real experts of lying.

Whether or not a commission comes into being, Trump’s advocacy of the vaccine-autism myth could have an impact. During the summer, a survey found that respondents who did not intend to get vaccinations for their families or themselves most often named Trump as a public figure who shared their views. After the election, another survey showed that 31% of Trump voters — compared with 18% of Clinton voters — agreed that “vaccines have been shown to cause autism.” There is clearly a receptive audience for his message. The more he talks about vaccines and autism — especially now that he has the bully pulpit of the presidency — the greater the risk that parents will skip or delay vaccinations. If that happens, more children will get vaccine-preventable diseases, some of which may result in death.

Presidential disrespect for science is more than just alarming. It can be lethal.

John J. Pitney, Jr. is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and the author ofThe Politics of Autism. Follow him on Twitter @jpitney

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