After reading David Merritt Johns’ recent piece in The Atlantic entitled “In Defense of Groupthink,” I came away feeling that the article seems a bit at odds with itself.
The piece spends the bulk of its energies chronicling the supposed flawed history of the concept of groupthink itself, and since it can’t be replicated in a study by social psychologists it really isn’t a thing.
The Atlantic: “Everyone Hates Groupthink. Experts Aren’t Sure It Exists.”
— HelioWave (@heliodown) November 3, 2025
Me, staring at the 47 think-pieces they ran this year all saying the same thing...
"tonight at 11 - a panel of 12 identical opinions will prove that group think doesn't exist"
🤣 pic.twitter.com/ysdVUpHLNd
Then it describes some of the classic examples of groupthink as something better than groupthink, and so what you may have thought was groupthink was actually “politicothink” at times, but other times, it was just sound thinking.
There’s more. The author then criticizes Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as being so opposed to groupthink, which we are led to believe is worth defending now, that he is replacing a groupthink in the form of a vaccine-advisory panel “with a group of his like-minded associates.”
You’re not confused. None of this makes sense according to the article's own standards. I feel like if I asked the author, “Is groupthink good or bad?,” he’d say, “Yes.”
I also feel like the author thinks groupthink doesn’t exist in the way conservatives describe it, but it does exist in the ways the author describes it, and not only is it good, but it’s good for you. And further, when conservatives do anything like-minded, whether you call it groupthink or not, it’s bad.
Groupthink doesn’t exist—according to “the experts”…the people most prone to groupthink.
— Common Sense Todd (@CommonSenseTodd) November 2, 2025
This may be the most Atlantic thing the Atlantic has ever Atlanticed. pic.twitter.com/OiJHcC7ppl
Before delving further into the piece that feels like it’s made of Jello, I’m going to recount a personal experience of mine to address the matter of groupthink in a healthcare setting to illustrate that as The Atlantic seems to deny the existence of groupthink in healthcare, you need look no further than your own primary care physician to confirm it does.
Years ago, I saw a series of doctors for something that was perplexing to them. None could figure out the condition or its cause, and so none could arrive at a diagnosis. Without a diagnosis, they couldn’t prescribe treatment or a course of action. Not one would even say, “Let’s try this.”
When I asked every doctor why this is, the word “protocol” entered the discussion. Doctors won’t violate “protocol.” That means you could see 20 of the world’s best doctors, each fully capable of independent thinking, but not one will do so in many cases because to violate protocol does two things. It goes against the system within which they operate, and you don’t do that. The second is legal exposure. If you’re a doctor and you violate protocol you put yourself and your organization at greater risk of getting sued. Doctors are risk averse in these situations, so no matter how much you’re struggling with whatever health situation you face, to do nothing is better for them than to do something and risk their own livelihoods.
The author might say this is a combination of things. Maybe “economic-think,” or “not-getting-sued-think,” or “don’t-want-to-buck-the-system-think.” Whatever you call it, it’s all still groupthink because the net result is the individual has surrendered his or her independence of thought and judgement and deferred to the group.
The focus of The Atlantic piece seems decidedly focused on groupthink as it relates to healthcare policy and administration, so let’s consider this paragraph as the author sets up the entire point of his article:
To be sure, there is something deeply familiar about the idea that human beings will sometimes follow the crowd because they cherish their place in the group. Yet the claim that our public-health mistakes can be pinned on some special force called groupthink is both unhelpful and misguided. For one thing, the label implies that we’d all be better off if a monkish master of ‘lonethink’ could be recruited to weigh the science on their own, and then arrive at the objective answer to a thorny problem, such as whether to shut down schools and when to reopen them.
No, the alternative to groupthink is not “lonethink.” The actual alternative is the thing that scares you and the entire left. Let’s call it “independent-think.” Otherwise known as independent thought, which often originates with independent thinkers. It sure would be nice to have some of those in white coats.
Prior to the pandemic, most of us actually thought those highly educated, experienced medical professionals relied more on their own knowledge and experience than, apparently, they do. And that’s why Americans’ faith in the medical establishment has plummeted coming out of the pandemic. It’s not just RFK, Jr. who doesn’t trust the medical establishment.
The author then performs some journalistic Jujutsu when he writes, “’This group is going where the science takes them,’ (Emily) Hilliard, the HHS spokesperson, told me when I asked about Kennedy’s decision to stack the nation’s vaccine-advisory panel with a group of his like-minded associates. To insist that this was necessary to rescue the committee from ‘vaccine groupthink’ is to get the matter backward: It labels a triumph of systematic decision making—one that has saved countless lives—as a tragedy; it courts disaster rather than forestalls it.”
The Atlantic is criticizing Kennedy for, in this case, following the scientific process, while relying on “like minded associates” (groupthink), all to get rid of “a triumph of systematic decision making.” If the system decides is that groupthink or not?
My only take away is that The Atlantic feels that groupthink is ‘good when we do it, bad when you do it.’
All of the verbal acrobatics of the piece seem to lead to one simple point. The author argues that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a good thing and Kennedy should not dismantle it. At which point, I felt like saying to the author, “Why didn’t you just say this up front?”
Some Context Needed
If you’re not already familiar with The Atlantic you may want to know that its owner is Laurene Powell Jobs, better known as Apple founder Steve Jobs’ widow and heir to his fortune. She spends her time, energies and money mostly on leftist causes. The Atlantic serves her purposes in this way.
Author David Merritt Johns is affiliated with a left-leaning organization called Data & Society, whose website describes him as “a PhD candidate studying the history of public health in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University.”
Data & Society has received funding from all of the usual left-leaning foundations, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Make of that what you will. This doesn’t mean they edited The Atlantic's article, but there does seem to be a whole lot of like-mindedness – if not groupthink – happening here.
