Don’t Throw Out the Baby—or the Bathwater: What MAHA Teaches Us About Science and the Power of Narratives
What the right is getting right and science is getting all wrong
"Stories were the first crucial information technology developed by humans.- Yuval Noah Harari’s book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Two events unfolded this week that, at first glance, seem unrelated. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released its Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) strategy. And, almost in the same breath, political figures began offering advice to pregnant women on the use of Tylenol, stoking fears of autism risk.
They are, in truth, entangled.
The MAHA strategy is a reminder that valuable, scientifically sound policies can come from outside our familiar political tribes. But it also reveals how easily scientific priorities—vaccination, nutrition, physical activity, clean air and water—can be woven into political identity. Once stitched into a tribal fabric, evidence stops functioning as evidence. It becomes a signal of allegiance. Our task as scientists is not simply to generate knowledge, but to rescue it from identity politics—to craft narratives that create belonging without demanding tribal loyalty. Science advances through discovery, but it travels through story. And right now, the story is broken.
The discomfort of learning from “the other side”
MAHA’s central goals—strengthening research, reducing toxic exposures, improving food environments, increasing activity for kids—are difficult to contest. Many echo decades of public health consensus. If stripped of its partisan label, much of the strategy reads like the wish list of the nutritionists, pediatricians, and epidemiologists in our institutions.
This is the first lesson for our community: good ideas are not owned by tribes. They belong, or should belong, to everyone. Yet our scientific community has too often treated ideas from “outside” with suspicion or disdain. We have made belonging conditional on alignment to our institutions, and in doing so, ceded ground to those who tell better stories. We’ve made it worse by expelling or distancing those that do not hold our “logical” values/evidence. Logic alone is not enough to change minds and hearts. If it were, behavioral economics would not exist, and no one would pay ten thousand dollars for sneakers. How, then, did science lose the narrative?
When narrative swallows evidence
Narratives do not simply report facts; they bind identities. As Yuval Noah Harari has argued, information networks are built from stories, not statistics. In the MAHA narrative, concerns about vaccines are braided with anxieties about ultra-processed foods, toxins, and children’s waist lines.
Individually, these concerns may be legitimate. But stitched together, they form an identity package: distrust of “mass campaigns,” suspicion of the pharmaceutical industry, allegiance to “natural living.” During the COVID pandemic, this emotionally charged narrative drew many well meaning advocates for healthy living into anti-vax campaigns. The empirical becomes a loyalty test.
Here the Solution Aversion Model offers clarity. People resist not only the facts themselves but the solutions implied by those facts—especially when the solutions threaten their values. For conservatives, vaccines can symbolize government intrusion. For natural-health advocates, they evoke corporate intrusion into the body. Add evolutionary instincts—fear of toxins, foreign substances in our blood—and vaccines become symbols, not serums.
When vaccines, diet, and fitness are bundled into one ideological package, all three risk becoming tribal signals. And when that happens, evidence no longer persuades, it becomes a partition.
What the evidence says about the tribal turn
Two recent studies illuminate this terrain.
A 2024 study in Vaccine mapped the causal drivers of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Brazil. It showed that mistrust in vaccine safety and belief in misinformation directly reduced uptake. Political ideology and religion acted indirectly, shaping both trust and susceptibility to falsehoods. Evangelical identity, for instance, not only increased support for far-right politics but independently decreased confidence in vaccine safety. Tribe mattered more than knowledge for a critical health decision.
A 2025 study in npj Vaccines tested conversational interventions among Romanian physicians. Doctors trained in empathetic-refutational interviewing shifted hesitant patients toward vaccination—without alienation, without shame (Figure below). The lesson: knowledge cannot defeat a narrative, but empathy, dialogue, and respect can reweave it.
When vaccines are cast as emblems of “us versus them,” polarization deepens. When they are framed as tools aligned with people’s values—protecting children, cleaning the air and water, sustaining communities—beliefs soften. Listening before lecturing. Connecting before condemning. It’s harder, but it’s also wired into our DNA. If now is not the time for dramatically shifting our messaging and depoliticizing scientific knowledge, when is it?
Rebranding the message: belonging without banners
If we want MAHA’s child-health priorities—real food, more movement, better science, cleaner air—to succeed, we must disentangle them from tribal branding and recouple them to universal values. Vaccines, too, must be reframed not as political litmus tests but as instruments of everyday health like sleep, walking and eating apples.
Lead with common ends. “Healthy kids, thriving schools, resilient communities” resonate across tribes. Vaccination belongs here, alongside seatbelts, sleep, and fresh food.
Separate the pillars. Do not bundle vaccines, diet, and fitness into a single ideology. Each stands on its own evidence.
Affirm before you inform. Reflect people’s goals—“protect my child,” “avoid toxins,” “preserve autonomy”—before showing how vaccines advance those goals.
Diversify messengers. Pair clinicians with pastors, coaches, small-business owners. The same science, different voices.
Practice transparency. Plain-language safety data, acknowledgment of uncertainty, visible accountability. Trust is not built by slogans.
Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash
A take-home for my scientific leaning colleagues and readers
“Vaccinations are part of a healthy lifestyle and a healthy community.” Bring people into the community through empathy, caring, an open mind and heart.
Like sleep, whole foods, and daily play, vaccines are one more tool families can use to protect children, schools, and neighbourhoods from harm. No banners, no tribes—just universal narratives we can (and always have?) agree on.
MAHA is, in Harari’s sense, a demonstration of narrative’s power. It shows that shared truths are possible—and that evidence can be tribalized if we are not vigilant. Our task is to create our own narratives, grounded in scientific discovery. Reframing the story so that science offers not division, but belonging. Only then can it return to its quiet work: keeping children healthy, together.