How to convince your member of Congress to follow the science

I’m not sure I have the answer yet. I’ll be updating this article as I learn more. Here’s where I am right now in the process.

This is my Congressman Sam Liccardo. He’s actually a really good guy. But like most people, he has been trained to trust the medical experts. I’m trying to help him see that conflating “follow the science” and “follow the expert advice” should not be conflated.

Executive summary

Like most people, members of Congress who claim to “follow the science” don’t really walk the talk. They follow what the talking head “experts” have to say.

So if you want to convince them, the battle has to start by convincing the “experts.”

And we all know how THAT goes, don’t we? They don’t engage. No debates. No public discussions. They run and hide when challenged.

So how do you make progress?

For most members, I think the ONLY viable approach is to:

1. Ask the member for the name of an expert they trust and have the member reach out to the expert to have him respond

2. Have a short written discussion with their expert.

3. Share with the member the result of that discussion.

For actual scientists who are members of Congress like Rep. Bill Foster, you can go direct.

I wrote, “You have said previously that vaccines don’t cause autism. I was wondering if you would be open to looking at very persuasive evidence that shows that is not the case.”

Bill responded immediately, “I’ll take a look. Send me a link.”

Holy shit! I had to pinch myself. I wished every member of Congress reacted that way. That is exactly the right response.

In this article, I’m going to summarize what happened when I tried this approach on my member of Congress Sam Liccardo who is a more typical member than Bill Foster.

My exchange with Rep. Liccardo

First off, let me say that I like Sam Liccardo. He’s a decent, hard working, talented, and smart guy.

The fact that Sam is engaging with me rather than blowing me off (like my former member of Congress Anna Eshoo) is evidence that he’s fundamentally a good human being. He has my respect for doing that.

My goal is to open his eyes to what is really going on here with respect to “follow the science” and vaccines in particular.

I’m going to summarize our conversation rather than quote it.

1. I wrote an email to Sam that we have 11 studies showing the unvaccinated are healthier and asked if he’d speak out about it in Congress and say that vaccine mandates are a bad idea because the State shouldn’t mandate a medical intervention that uniformly makes our children unhealthy. I cited the reanalysis of the Henry Ford study done by

2. He wrote back saying the first first two authors of the Henry Ford reanalysis study are experts in linguistics and that he relies on the advice of subject matter experts for forming his opinions on scientific matters. He wrote, “In the meantime, I’ll continue to follow my boring, uninteresting approach of heeding the counsel of trained, experienced medical doctors and epidemiologists who publish in peer-reviewed journals, and who openly and actively debate their findings. Those findings are far from infallible -- they’re routinely contested, as they should be. But they should be contested by scientists in their fields. I’m not ready to abandon the scientific method. When top doctors and epidemiologists conclude as you have, I’m happy to heed them.” He concluded “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

3. I wrote back that the senior author was an epidemiologist, it was published in a peer-reviewed journal, and that critically, there are no errors in the paper. I addressed all the possible reasons he could reject the Henry Ford study.

4. I didn’t hear back so I wrote him again asking for a reply and suggested that he simply connect me with a scientist he trusts and we can have a conversation about it and report back.

5. He wrote back that he had a better idea: that we should trust the peer-reviewed scientific literature. He said, “I have a better idea: let’s let the medical and scientific community identify the experts. Then they debate publicly—through peer reviewed journals, conferences, and subsequent studies. Steve, I’m not trying to be difficult or to duck a tough issue. This isn’t a tough issue for me—if the preponderance of the scientific community arrives at a conclusion, politicians like me should listen, and implement policy consistent with those conclusions. Otherwise, we should shut the hell up and stay out of it.”

6. I wrote back “You’ve set the standard: if the preponderance of the scientific community arrives at a conclusion, you implement policy consistent with it.

   So let’s apply that standard. How does the scientific community ‘arrive at a conclusion’? It does so through its published, peer-reviewed work — that’s the only observable evidence a conclusion exists. And on the specific question of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children, there are 11 published, peer-reviewed studies — Mawson (two studies, 2017), Hooker & Miller (SAGE Open 2020; JTS 2021), Lyons-Weiler & Thomas (2020), Lyons-Weiler (2022), Garner (2022), Enriquez (2005, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology), and the others in my article. All 11 find the unvaccinated cohort is healthier. To my knowledge, there is no peer-reviewed vaxxed/unvaxxed study finding the opposite. So the preponderance of the published scientific record — 100% — points one way.

   If ‘the scientific community’ arrives at conclusions by some other means than its published work, tell me what that means is, and who’s in it. Otherwise, the community has spoken, and the preponderance is unanimous.

   What’s the next step?”

7. I’m waiting for a response and will update this article as I learn more.

Summary

By and large, members of Congress don’t really directly trust the science.

Instead, they listen to the advice of “medical experts” and believe those experts hook, line, and sinker.

That’s the mistake they are making.

I had proposed a reasonable approach that was actually suggested by ChatGPT which is for the member to facilitate a conversation with an scientific expert that the member trusts. Normally, such experts won’t give you the time of day, so that’s why having a member of Congress requesting the expert to engage is crucial.

Sam didn’t accept my suggestion; he went straight to “I follow the scientific literature.” That’s a corrupt system but Sam, like most people, is clueless about that. But I’ll work with what I’m given. The literature supports my point about vaccines. There are no unvaxxed/vaxxed studies showing the vaxxed are better off.

Stay tuned.