Anti-vaccine activist and current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked hard to villainize infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, even writing a conspiracy-filled book lambasting the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
But after a year serving as the nation’s top health official, Kennedy — who has no background in medicine, science or public health — still has less influence with Americans than the respected physician-scientist.
In a nationally representative survey conducted in February by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 54 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Fauci, while only 38 percent had confidence in Kennedy. Breaking down those supporters further, 25 percent of respondents said they were “very confident” in Fauci, while only 9 percent said the same for Kennedy.
Credit: Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania, 2026
Overall, the survey found a clear divide between the confidence of Kennedy and other Trump administration officials and the confidence of career scientists and medical associations.
Among federal agencies, 67 percent said they trust career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. But only 43 percent said they trust the leaders of those agencies.
“The public is discriminating the credibility of career scientists at CDC, NIH, and FDA from those agencies’ leaders and recalling significantly greater confidence in the guidance provided by former Director Fauci than by Secretary Kennedy or Dr. Oz,” Ken Winneg, managing director of survey research for APPC, said in a statement.
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