Better in their words…

Let us begin with what is human. Fear. Grief. Disillusionment. Many who signed the September 3 letter calling for Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resignation are no doubt good people. They have built careers in public health under an institutional consensus that framed obedience as virtue and critique as heresy. Now, as the scaffolding of that paradigm begins to fall, their reaction is not unusual: resistance. It is the frightened grasp of those who mistake inertia for truth. But the world has changed, and it is not Kennedy who changed it. He did not create the wreckage; he inherited it.

To the signers: this rebuttal is not a rejection of your humanity. It is a call to reclaim your scientific integrity. The letter you endorsed does not merely contain errors. It commits logical malpractice and trades in the very political distortion that has eroded public trust in the agencies you serve. We will show you, point by point, how your appeal is not the principled protest it claims to be, but a brittle defense of harmful narrative capture.

Section I: The First Fallacy Is Equivocation

Your letter cites a previous open letter with “6,370 signers,” then claims “1,040” signatories on the current document, conflating the two without clarification. This is not an oversight. It seems rhetorical sleight-of-hand. By collapsing distinct events into one undifferentiated surge of protest, you project a false image of momentum. Such conflation violates the standards of precision to which scientists and public servants must be held.

If these numbers reflect two separate letters—as they appear to—they must be kept distinct. Without that, the credibility of both collapses into confusion.

Section II: The Appeal to Authority Without Argument

You invoke the resignations of Susan Monarez, Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis, and Daniel Jernigan as if departure itself were evidence of righteousness. But resignation is not argument. It is not data. It is not even necessarily dissent. People resign for many reasons, not all noble. The appeal to authority in your letter functions not as illumination but as intimidation: “See how many important people left? Surely, they must be right.”

This is not logic. It is orthodoxy. And orthodoxy has no place in science.

The same fallacy appears when you list the supporting organizations—AAP, APHA, NNU, Doctors for America—as if organizational alignment replaces the need for evidence. Institutions can be wrong. They have been, repeatedly: on tobacco, on sugar, on opioids, on Vioxx, on leaded gasoline, and more. To defend policy solely because it is institutionally popular is to replace epistemology with branding. Our advice to you? Relearn the ropes: In 2025, job security does not come from narrative enforcement from any side. It comes from participating in objective transparency in the conduct of your job.

Section III: The Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence of Guilt

You accuse Secretary Kennedy of rescinding EUAs and altering vaccine policy “without data or methods.” Yet the FDA did release revocation memos. They are public. They contain rationale.

The EUA were awarded on highly questionable data now drawn into question. Yet you do not engage with the facts made abundantly clear by recent publications readily available. You merely assert their inadequacy without quoting, citing, or analyzing their contents.

This is rhetorical malpractice. If your objection is that these memos and peer-reviewed studies lacked sufficient scientific depth, you must demonstrate that—not presume it. You cite disagreement, but you do not cite error. That is not science. That is bureaucratic grievance.

And your failure to quote from these documents suggests you either have not read them or are hoping your audience hasn’t.

Section IV: Guilt by Association, Weaponized

You list appointees by name—Retsef Levi, Robert Malone, David Geier—as if their inclusion alone discredits the administration. You offer no critique of their actual ideas, their arguments, their publications. You smear by association and dare to call it evidence. You assume what you are told about them without independent, critical analysis.

What you may not realize is that smearing them, you have, in classic terms and conditions of debate, conceded defeat.

Let us make this clear: ad hominem is not rebuttal. It is the last refuge of those who have lost the plot.

If you disagree with Levi’s actuarial models, cite them and dismantle them. If you oppose Malone’s arguments on mRNA toxicokinetics, quote and refute them. If you believe Geier’s autism-vaccine risk frameworks are flawed, walk the reader through those flaws. Anything less is not opposition. It is avoidance. Your heads will be pulled from the sand soon enough.

Section V: The Misuse of Tragedy

You open your letter with a reference to the August 8 shooting at CDC headquarters. You frame this as a consequence of dissent. You suggest that policy changes provoked it.

This is grotesque. It politicizes, and thus dishonors and abuses the man who died protecting your colleagues.

If this were grief, we would honor it. But it is not grief. It is narrative framing. You appropriate a tragedy to preemptively indict your critics. You hint that debate is violence. You imply that disagreement is bloodshed. That is not how societies address disagreement. You cannot silence the masses who know what you do not want them know, or what you yourselves do not yet know.

The abuse is not just logically fallacious. It is morally reprehensible. There is no evidence that any HHS policy triggered this attack. You do not even allege that. You merely set the scene—and then assign the blame.

That is not persuasion. It is manipulation.

Section VI: The Danger of Professional Insulation

Public health agencies have become echo chambers. The same credentialed voices circulate through internal committees, advisory panels, and task forces. Dissenters are labeled, excluded, and discredited. The result is a form of bureaucratic epistemic closure. We have fought and won for the right to try transparency. It’s not only coming to your job: It’s here. Your boss, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has called upon you to collaborate in transparent objectivity. Are you saying that is too tall an ask?

You see Kennedy’s actions as threatening not because they lack logic, but because they puncture insulation. You have confused consensus with correctness.

History is replete with examples of institutional error upheld by groupthink: – The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which public health officials monitored disease progression without treatment for decades. – The low-fat, high-carbohydrate nutrition guidelines that fueled an obesity and diabetes epidemic. – The opioid prescription guidelines that labeled pain the “fifth vital sign” and led to mass iatrogenesis.

In each case, public health professionals defended the prevailing view long after the data had collapsed beneath it.

This is what Kennedy is working tirelessly to prevent. Your health, your family’s health, are risk if you obey the news cycles. If you think Pharma is your friend, you are stuck on your Bluesky echo chamber. Right where they want you to be. You may disagree with Secretary Kennedy’s methods—but to reject the necessity of disruption is to repeat the cycle and subject yourselves to those who have you completely ignorant of iatrogenic disease. That will change.

Section VII: You Cannot Both Serve Science and Fear Rational Discourse

Your core objection is not that Kennedy has acted illegally or without transparency. It is that he has acted contrary to what you say you believe. But science is not belief. It is process. And the process must include voices you dislike, data that contradicts your priors, and leaders who force uncomfortable truths to the surface.

You object to the statement: “Trusting experts is not a feature of either science or democracy.”

But that statement is correct. Science does not demand trust. It demands scrutiny. Democracy does not demand faith in bureaucrats. It demands accountability.

“Expert” is an unqualified label. Did you support the experts at CDC who published that 20 layers of cloth mask was sufficient to filter as well as an N95? Then 16? Then a week later 1 layer? Where’s the science on that? Can you point to it? Did Fauci use science and reason and logic? Do you still wear a cloth mask?

Your outrage is not with falsehood. It is with the loss of monopoly, of what you believed you were part of. You’ve been duped. That is now over. While you decry the appointment of “political ideologues”, there was nary a peep over Fauci’s disastrous collapse of science in the name of ideology. Imagine a coin, with empirical, objective science on one side, and narrative enforcement (for any reason, including those you think are good ones). When you turn the coin over from bias-inducing practices mastered by the captured HHS stem to stern, more ideology is not found. It’s gold standard science. You are objecting to gold-standard science.

Your outrage is not with falsehood. It is with the loss of monopoly. The feared loss of influence, control, and income. Think back to each time in your career in which you decided not to speak truth to power. It’s very good to see your memo. It’s a healthy exercise. Our advice is: Continue, locally. In your department. Call out shortcuts, call out dual standards, and call out the manipulation of data to make sure the right results are achieved. We will help you realize that prediction science tests generalizability, which is far more useful than over-adjusted association.

Section VIII: A Quick Table of Fallacies in the Resignation Letter

For a recap, your letter falls short of even a cursory evaluation for following the principles of logic and reason.

Conclusion: Reclaim Your Integrity Before You Lose the Republic

To those who signed this letter: you are not powerless. But you are mistaken. If you love the agencies you serve, then do not trap them in the wreckage of their past mistakes. The new public health must be built on logic, transparency, and humility—not on memos, resignations, and slogans.

Secretary Kennedy’s moves are not a purge. Change comes with reformation. Change is hard. And the only people who fear reformation are those who benefited from the corruption it seeks to end.

Return to reason. You are still welcome there.

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