Like Giving Certain Elements of Genius to a Baby

“I mean, this was mostly going to be on how not to have a child affected, but we’ve learned some pretty good things about certain elements of genius that can be given to a baby and the baby can get better and in some cases may be substantially better.” —President Donald J. Trump

An almost immediate slew of carefully crafted, expert counters—including from The BMJ and epidemiologist Ann Bauer (co-author of the study supposedly underpinning the claim)—to Trump’s largely unfounded assertion at a September 22 White House press conference that “Tylenol is not good,” left little, I supposed, for a non-medical expert such as myself to add. I had, of course, once again vastly misunderestimated the apparent ignorance of the misinformed social-media commenter.

Now, my fervent hope is that the sample quote at the start of this post alone makes it clear that the content of that press conference was a long way from the level of discourse an academic instructor such as myself would expect, even from the most low-level of students. If not, please join me for a quick tutorial on just how wildly Trump’s talk diverged from the academic conventions that would be expected if he were merely "parroting" published research.

Trump’s opening admission that he has always had “very strong feelings” about the topic shows an immediate disregard for one of the most well-known—albeit somewhat controversial—conventions of academic discourse: objectivity and impartiality. The danger of this is promptly highlighted when he confirms that the results were biased from the outset by his pre-existing suspicions being communicated to the researchers from day one as the expected outcome. That this announcement’s focus is on Tylenol rather than the vaccines of those initial suspicions pretty much entirely discredits them is neither noted nor, as we shall see, a constraint on what is claimed.

The convention of clarity, economy, and conciseness is, to little surprise for anyone familiar with Trump’s rhetorical style, completely disregarded, as that focus on Tylenol is repeatedly abandoned in favour of emotive, discredited, and irrelevant digressions into those pre-existing suspicions about delicate babies being pumped up like horses with vats of “too much liquid” and “junk.” All of which is, of course, accompanied by the expected self-aggrandising appeals to the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the unsettlingly creepy reference to the mothers of autistic children as “beautiful ladies.”

Trump, also somewhat expectedly, completely disregards the convention of rational argument supported by evidence and the incorporation of accepted theory through referencing and citation, calling instead upon anecdotal evidence—specifically a Trump Tower employee whose son developed a fever following vaccination and got “fried”—as evidence for his claims. Accusing establishment experts of concealing the truth he, like all the best conspiracy theorists, trumpets his very lack of expertise as making his opinion all the more reliable.

At first, Trump appears to conform to the convention of caution and restraint by conceding that not everything is “100% understood,” but he then makes virtue of his refusal to be “careful” with what he says, asserting that he does not need to wait for the results of further research. Thus, the considered wording of actual medical advice is completely discarded in favour of his own dangerous personal opinion that patients should “fight like hell” not to take Tylenol and “tough it out.” A claim that many actual experts conclude will cost lives.

The mere fact that any of this could have been honestly mistaken for anything even approaching genuine academic discourse merely highlights how poor scientific literacy is among much of the population. And if, as Trump intimates, we really do want our children imbued with certain “elements of genius,” then this surely would be the place to start. After all, to quote the President one last time, “nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.”