NEWSsciencemag.org SCIENCENEWSPHOTO: TANIA/CONTRASTO/REDUXI
n May 2016, Roberto Burioni, a viro-
logist at Vita-Salute San Raffaele
University in Milan, Italy, was asked
to appear on a popular TV talk show
to face off against two opponents of
vaccines—a former DJ, Red Ronnie,
and an actress and TV personality,
Eleonora Brigliadori. The host gave
most of the air time to the Italian
celebrities. Then, with just a few minutes
left, he turned to Burioni.
Burioni realized he didn’t have time to
make the usual arguments about statistics
and scientific uncertainty, so he kept his mes-sage simple: “The Earth is round, gasoline is
flammable, and vaccines are safe and effec-
tive,” he said. “All the rest are dangerous lies.”
“It went off like a bomb,” Burioni recalls.
Emails from viewers poured into the show,
with some questioning how the publicly
funded TV network hosting it could allow
such ill-informed personalities to speak
about medicine. Burioni took up the theme
on his Facebook page, asking how one
branch of government could broadcast lies
about vaccines while its health agency pro-
moted immunization. More than 5 million
people responded to his comments. Radiojournalist Alessandro Milan called Burioni’s
rebuttal to Red Ronnie “the 13 most beauti-
ful words heard on TV in the last year.”
So began the unlikely media career of
Roberto Burioni. In just a few years, he
has gone from being a respected but little-
known professor to a major media person-
ality and an internet savvy advocate for
science. In a country where the government
has sometimes promoted dubious medi-
cine, such as unproven stem cell therapies,
Burioni has become an outspoken advocate
for scientific evidence on vaccines and other
medical topics, and a harsh critic of pseudo-FEATURES
FIGHTING
WORDS
Virologist Roberto Burioni
has become a celebrity
in Italy by sparring with
vaccine skeptics
By Douglas Starr
16 3 JANUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6473
Published by AAAS