RFK Jr. Challenge: Accepted

Some time back, John Stossel interviewed Trump's favorite leftist, RFK, Jr., who complained that he couldn't get air time, even with people willing to argue with him. During the interview, Kennedy said, "If it's not true, then argue with me, or post something afterward," inspiring Stossel to write a column doing just that.

Stossel's piece should help any reasonably intelligent adult see that, for all their faults, news networks have good reason not to hand a platform to Kennedy. This it does by focusing on three whoppers from the interview and quickly dispatching them.

The first and shortest refutation concerns fracking, which Kennedy opposes and spreads falsehoods about:

[Kennedy said,] "I was in Dimock, Pennsylvania, watching fire come out of a faucet from fracking. Every home in that neighborhood, they can light up a cigarette lighter under their faucet, turn their faucet on and it'll flame like a lighter. That's from fracking."

No, it isn't.

A leftist documentary, Gasland, publicized flaming faucets and claimed fracking is the cause.

But it's not.

Water is flammable in many places in America where no fracking is done. It happens because of naturally occurring gas, already in the ground.

Even the director of the EPA during Obama's presidency said, "In no case have we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemicals to enter groundwater."

The other two concern vaccines, and include Kennedy's indulgence in the myth, rooted in a fraudulent and long-ago retracted paper claiming a link between vaccines and autism. In one case, Kennedy's role in spreading unfounded paranoia about vaccine safety led to 83 deaths in Samoa.

While I am puzzled that Stossel chose to interview Kennedy in the first place -- his lunatic opinions are already widely known -- I do appreciate this column, because it shows the proper way to deal with people like him: Help people who might be unaware of Kennedy's knowledge claims get an idea of what they are and see that they aren't true. The curious can look into them more at their own leisure.

Ideally, if one has done a good-enough job, most people will see -- as I would hope here -- that it is a bad idea to take Kennedy's view on anything into serious consideration.

Ironically, a commenter at Stossel's site illustrates in two different ways why debating someone like Kennedy is a bad idea, in case the example of Duane Gish has faded from the public consciousness.

This the commenter does with a 300-word Gish gallop penned at 2:30 a.m.

First, it is safe to assume that Kennedy would do something like this is a debate: Nobody listening to a debate will be able to discount every falsehood or correct every motivated misinterpretation, but the sum will cause many people to lose focus and imagine that there might actually be something there.

This is a big part of why a public debate with an irrational participant like Kennedy is practically designed to lend such people undeserved credibility in the minds of those who need the most help understanding an issue. Thus, for public consumption, debating an irrational opponent is usually a bad idea if promoting the truth is the goal.

Second, beyond a certain point, it is simply a waste of time to discuss an issue with a certain type of person, as exemplified by this commenter. Talking to this type is like battling the Hydra of Greek mythology: every point you address will only cause them to raise more objections -- of the false, arbitrary, or irrelevant type.

And so, for private purposes, treating with an irrational person is of limited use at best. One can perhaps confirm for oneself the opponent's irrationality and move on. (If others are in earshot, it can be helpful to them to refute one or two objections or mention a source before quitting.)

While I did not watch the interview, I assume that Stossel chose to reply later, in order to keep both the interview and the rebuttal on-topic and of a reasonable length.

-- CAV