Ask A Genius 1493: Scientific Luck, Privilege, and Peril: From Newton’s Miracles to RFK Jr.’s Anti-Vaccine Damage
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/15
Scientific breakthroughs have often depended on timing, privilege, or sheer luck. From Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin to Isaac Newton’s plague-era “miracle year,” history shows that chance favors the prepared mind. Yet, privilege—like that of Prince Louis de Broglie or Tycho Brahe—also played a decisive role. In stark contrast, today’s scientific progress is undermined not by fortune but by politics and misinformation. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, has advanced anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, opposed germ theory, and fueled deadly consequences, from Samoa’s measles deaths to threats against cancer vaccine research.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And you asked who the other lucky scientists were, besides the “lucky” Dick Feynman.
Rick Rosner: Well, Feynman had a reputation for bedding many women, and in an era when sex was not easy to come by, he got laid quite a bit. Let us hope his numbers were not as high as they could have been—after all, some of those conquests reportedly included graduate students’ wives and girlfriends. It would have been better if he had not attempted to sleep with everyone.
However, I was not thinking of him. I was thinking of Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin when Penicilliummould landed in one of his Petri dishes. It killed everything around it, and he famously asked, “What is this?” That was pretty lucky—and possible only because he was observant and knowledgeable enough to recognize its significance. As Pasteur said, “Chance favours the prepared mind.”
Isaac Newton was also fortunate. The plague shut down Cambridge University and sent everyone home. Newton spent months at his mother’s home. He had already been sent away as a child after his mother remarried a man who did not want him around—a fact that certainly did not help his temperament—and during this isolation, he laid the foundations for calculus and gravity. This period became known as his annus mirabilis, or “miracle year.” Both Newton and Einstein had miracle years in which they produced transformative work at extraordinary speed.
Another example is Prince Louis de Broglie. He was a prince, with the wealth to pursue theoretical physics and develop the de Broglie wavelength. Tycho Brahe also benefited from privilege. His resources allowed him to pursue astronomy and track planetary orbits. In a duel, however, he lost part of his nose and wore a prosthetic, often said to be made of gold, for the rest of his life.
If you were wealthy enough in specific eras, you had the luxury to pursue science. That is a form of luck. Contrast that with the United States now, where science funding faces constant political pressure.
This brings us to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Secretary of Health and Human Services. He has a long record of promoting medical misinformation, particularly about vaccines, autism, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, which alarms public health experts. His late wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, died by suicide in May 2012, found hanging in a barn at their home. Before this, she had discovered his journal from 2001, which detailed sexual encounters with thirty-seven women—entries he referred to as his “lust demons.” Divorce filings at the time described him as a compulsive adulterer and substance abuser.
After her death, Mary’s family clashed with the Kennedys over her burial, a dispute that went to court. Meanwhile, Kennedy has continued to advance fringe medical theories, including opposition to the germ theory of disease, and more recently attempted to pressure a medical journal into retracting a study showing no link between aluminum in vaccines and autism or allergies. The journal refused, finding no evidence of misconduct.
In short, scientific luck has often depended on privilege, timing, or sheer accident—while today, politics and ideology can actively undermine it.
What a fuckhead. This is one of the best-established theories in biology. We have known about germs for centuries, and vaccines have been used since the late 1700s. Germ theory is a foundational part of medicine, but he does not believe germs cause disease. Some of the unluckiest scientists in history might be those trying to work in America today under these people.
Also, RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine policies—cutting off vaccination programs—will kill tens of thousands of Americans, and probably tens of thousands more outside of America. He has already been linked to deaths in Samoa.
He travelled there and convinced leaders that vaccines were dangerous and unnecessary. To be clear, there are two Samoas: the independent country of Samoa and American Samoa. In independent Samoa, officials temporarily suspended the national measles vaccination program in 2018 after a tragic medical error involving the improper preparation of vaccines. Anti-vaccine activists, including RFK Jr., amplified misinformation during this period. As a result, vaccination rates collapsed, and when a measles outbreak struck in 2019, eighty-three people died, nearly half of them children.
That record makes him not just reckless but dangerous. His opposition to vaccination is not limited to measles or COVID. It extends to blocking research into mRNA vaccines, including those showing promise in preventing or treating cancers. We are in the early days of vaccines that could protect against cancers that are otherwise very difficult to treat. However, his policies risk shutting down that entire line of research.
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