Aaron Rodgers, the New York Jets quarterback who recently implied that comedian Jimmy Kimmel had a nefarious connection with the late accused pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, would no longer be appearing on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” show this NFL season, its host said Wednesday.
Rodgers was right back on the show the next day.
“‘Aaron Rodgers Tuesday,’ Season 4 is done,” McAfee said. “There are going to be a lot of people happy with that, myself included to be honest.” But then Rodgers was right back on McAfee’s show the next day.
“There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, who’s really hoping that doesn’t come out,” Rodgers had said last week, in reference to court documents connected to Epstein that were about to be unsealed. Kimmel’s name was not on any list associated with Epstein.
“Either he actually believes my name was going to be on Epstein’s list, which is insane,” Kimmel said in his opening monologue on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Monday night, “or the more likely scenario is he doesn’t actually believe that; he just said it because he’s mad at me for making fun of his topknot and his lies about being vaccinated.” In 2021, Rodgers infamously argued that he was “immunized” against Covid-19 by using homeopathic treatment.
Those who’ve not been following the course of Rodgers’ public celebrity — and, perhaps, the trajectory of U.S. political discourse — might be confused about why a noted NFL quarterback would have such strong opinions about alternatives to vaccination and documents related to Epstein that were about to be unsealed. The answer is rather simple: This is what can happen when celebrities “do their own research.”
In Rodgers’ Tuesday appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show,” he brought up a monologue that Jimmy Kimmel had done at his expense. Rodgers said, “The history of this — whatever this is between Jimmy and I — this goes back to Covid times, right? And in Covid times, he mentioned on his show jokes about my immunization … and the fact that, you know, [I did] my own research.”
Rodgers fails to see the joke in an NFL quarterback without scientific expertise doing his own research about immunization and Covid.
Rodgers fails to see the joke in an NFL quarterback without scientific expertise doing his own research about immunization and Covid. But he’s far from alone in not seeing it.
Whether or not one finds it amusing, there is a deeper issue here, and it pertains to the nature of expertise and what it means for a nonexpert to “do my own research.” Add in factors relating to public celebrity and you end up with the silliness that we see today with Rodgers. His case is particularly interesting given that, as NBC News once pointed out, “before Covid, Rodgers had enjoyed a reputation as a sensitive, Berkeley-educated renaissance man who was even a guest host of ‘Jeopardy.’”
A group of social scientists, led by Kevin Aslett at the University of Central Florida, recently published a paper in Nature where they provide evidence that when people use online searches to evaluate the truthfulness of false claims, they consistently end up increasing their belief in those falsehoods. This happens because people don’t know what they don’t know. That sounds trite, but it has profound implications.
When someone is unsure about what is true — perhaps because, for any number of reasons, they don’t trust what experts are saying — then they may spend some effort researching the evidence. This is not fundamentally a problem. However, in cases where these searches are likely to surface low-quality or misinformative content, what Aslett and colleagues refer to as “data voids,” the process of searching for evidence is likely to yield worse outcomes than simply defaulting to expert opinion.
What’s worse, since the layperson “researcher” does not have the underlying training or knowledge to evaluate the evidence they’re discovering, to them it will feel like they’ve gained knowledge!
Not only do they have a significant platform to spread their opinions to others, but the very fact of their celebrity means they are likely to be given positive reinforcement and support. This problem of people rejecting expertise and following the conclusions of their own research is exacerbated — and, in some cases, fueled — by celebrity. When a celebrity forms an opinion based on their own research, not only do they have a significant platform to spread their opinions to others, but the very fact of their celebrity means that they are likely to be given positive reinforcement and support. That is, even in cases where a public figure says something that many disagree with and is factually false, it’s likely that at least some people exposed to their falsehood will communicate agreement with them. Confirmation bias means that the celebrity won’t have a problem taking this agreement to mean that they are correct in their opinions, further increasing their overconfidence. Take the case of Rodgers: Even if his regular weekly segment is over at ESPN, he’s surely had countless people reinforcing his beliefs and praising him. If anything, he now has special status as a martyr (a tactic he has used in the past). This too has the potential to increase his confidence that he’s right. What makes this cycle particularly pernicious is that once the “did my own research” celebrity takes a public stance on an issue and continues to push out “content” related to the issue, they then become an “expert” on the topic. This means that others who do their own research may come across the celebrity’s dubious “research,” thus perpetuating falsehoods. Timothy Caulfield, a professor at the University of Alberta, has been arguing for years that celebrities can be key sources of misinformation. The solution to this problem is for people to start recognizing not only the importance of expertise, but also the importance of determining who is and who isn’t an expert. Hint: Celebrities are rarely experts on the things unrelated to their celebrity. In domains where there is a lot of misinformation, what counts as expertise becomes obscured. In many contexts, the importance of expertise is obvious. People don’t take their cars to people who aren’t mechanics. They wouldn’t dare cross a bridge that wasn’t built by an engineer. That’s because they realize, at least on some level, that we need experts to function in a complicated world. The problem is that in domains where there is a lot of misinformation, what counts as expertise becomes obscured. It is common for people to listen to NFL quarterbacks on issues unrelated to football because the quarterback is giving them a message that is more consistent with what they already believe. It is important to remember, though, that having done “one’s own research” is not a strong signal that the person is trustworthy. Absent some other form of credentials, the fact that someone has a large platform for their opinions is not a sign that they should be trusted. Given that their platform may have increased their overconfidence, if anything, it’s the opposite.
Gordon Pennycook
Gordon Pennycook is a Himan Brown Faculty Fellow and associate professor of psychology at Cornell University. 
