Kevin Hall

Former senior nutrition scientist, National Institutes of Health

“Presuming that science must confirm a political bias will destroy the world’s best health research institution.” –Kevin Hall

Good science is based on data: what the results say is factual, and that’s where conclusions must be drawn from. Until now, that fundamental truth of the scientific method has never been questioned at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Under Trump and his Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., however, data now take a back seat to politics, and the NIH is being refashioned to follow the secretary’s wishes. Kevin Hall was a senior nutrition scientist at the NIH for more than 20 years, but to maintain his integrity as a scientist he resigned when his research was censored because it did not fit the political line of the new leadership.

Kevin Hall received his doctorate from McGill University in 1999. His title at the NIH was Section Chief in the Integrative Physiology Section at the Laboratory of Biological Modeling, where he focused on applying mathematical models to metabolism and body weight regulation. He is one of the foremost researchers on how people’s diets affect their health, tackling the question of “how our food environment affects what we eat and how what we eat affects our bodies and our brains.”  

Among his achievements, Dr. Hall published the first study showing that ultra-processed foods make people eat more, which affects weight gain, Type 2 diabetes, and other chronic illnesses. When commentators started talking about ultra-processed foods as an “addiction,” however, he released more research to show that the popular addiction metaphor is an oversimplification. It was a reminder that scientific research cannot be bent to fit political narratives; there is more work to be done in this crucial area. 

Dr. Hall may have expected Secretary Kennedy to support work like his, since Kennedy has often spoken of diet as a key to health, and has said, "We are betraying our children by letting [food] industries poison them.” In fact, Dr. Hill has found his work being curtailed and censored: “Unfortunately, recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science,” he said. “Specifically, I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultra-processed food addiction.”

Officials at the NIH also stopped him from speaking to reporters, causing him to worry that those officials would also interfere with the design and execution of his studies. Then they demanded that he revise a section of a paper he co-authored discussing “health equity,” which refers to the reality that not everyone has equal access to healthy food. Dr. Hall removed his name from the article rather than edit the section or allow an edited version to be published with his name on it.

In a May interview he said more about why he left: “What I didn’t anticipate was the microscope that our research was going to be placed under. Many of the traditional things that we would go through the NIH to get approval for were automatically bumped up to the level of HHS. It was required for a political appointee to approve those things.”  

Until now, health research in the US has been “gold-standard science”; due to political intervention, that may no longer be the case. The NIH used to be “a wonderful place because it allows scientists to take risks, form unique collaborations, and do studies difficult to conduct elsewhere,” Dr. Hall noted in an April 16 social media post on X, publicly announcing his resignation due to censorship. Political interventions, he suggested, may ruin the NIH: “Presuming that science must confirm a political bias will destroy the world’s best health research institution.” 

Dr. Hall is not a lone voice: in June, more than 60 NIH scientists sent a letter – titled the Bethesda Declaration – to NIH director Jay Bhattacharya (who has also come under fire from public health activists and scientists for his anti-Covid vaccine positions, like RFK Jr). The letter represents an ethical statement of their commitment to principles of science. It argues that “our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,” and details the ways in which current NIH policies undermine scientific research and public health. 

One of the letter’s organizers, Dr. Jenna Norton, said she and her colleagues feared “being complicit in these atrocious and harmful things that are harming research participants who’ve made this generous gift to help other people be healthy.”

At a time when diabetes and obesity have been rising rapidly in the US, it is more important than ever that scientists be free to perform rigorous scientific research to investigate the links between nutrition and our health. The NIH lost a brilliant scientist and public health advocate when Dr. Hall resigned rather than succumb to political censorship. America gained another principled patriot.