Robert Root-Bernstein

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| birth_date = {{birth date |1953|8|7}}

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| fields = Physiology

| workplaces = Michigan State University

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| education = Princeton University (PhD)

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| known_for = Research on creativity

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Robert Root-Bernstein (born August 7, 1953) (PhD, Princeton University) is a professor of physiology at Michigan State University. In 1981, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a "genius grant".

He has also researched and consulted on creativity for more than fifteen years. Among other books, he has authored Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People, Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge, and Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus. In Rethinking AIDS, Root-Bernstein postulated that factors in addition to HIV may contribute to AIDS. Root-Bernstein is a former member of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, a group of AIDS denialists.

Root-Bernstein asserts that HIV, while involved in the development of AIDS, may be no more important than an accumulation of co-factors such as a history of poor nutrition, lack of hygiene, intravenous drug use, anal intercourse, as well as various infections and lifestyle diseases. In its April 2004 issue, POZ published a quote it attributed to Root-Bernstein: "Both the camp that says HIV is a pussycat and the people who claim AIDS is all HIV are wrong ... The denialists make claims that are clearly inconsistent with existing studies. When I check the existing studies, I don't agree with the interpretation of the data, or, worse, I can't find the studies [at all]."{{cite magazine | url = http://www.poz.com/articles/451_2788.shtml | title = Dead Certain? | first = Bob | last = Lederer | magazine = POZ | date = April 2006 | accessdate = 2006-10-31 | archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20110104004003/http://www.poz.com/articles/451_2788.shtml | archivedate = 2011-01-04 | url-status = live }}{{unreliable source?|date=June 2015}}