According to the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS, at least seven studies cited in the Make America Healthy Again report released last week are nonexistent. The White House shrugged off questions about the errors.
The Make America Healthy Again Report, which the White House released last week to examine what it describes as the “root causes of deteriorating child health,” cites studies and references that don’t exist, according to a Thursday report from the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS.
The report claims to be “backed by compelling data and long-term trends” and grounded on “common scientific basis,” but NOTUS analysis revealed that at least seven of its cited sources could not be found. The New York Times later reported having found an unspecified number of additional erroneous references.
Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist named in the MAHA report as an author on a study about anxiety in teens, told NOTUS that the paper cited in the report “is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved in.” Keyes was surprised that her name had appeared in the report.
The publication identified a handful of other studies that were cited in the report but which either don’t exist or cannot be found on the usual platforms for peer-reviewed scientific literature. These include two studies that allegedly illustrate the link between a spike in direct-to-consumer advertising and increasing medication prescriptions for children.
Ivan Oransky, co-founder of the watchdog site Retraction Watch, noted in comments to the Times that the report’s errors were characteristic of those produced through use of generative AI. He said he did not know whether AI had been used in preparing the report, however.
The White House shrugged off concerns about the citations, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters on Thursday that the erroneous citations were due to “formatting issues” and that they do “not negate the substance of report,” according to reporting from the Agence France-Presse. The HHS has since updated the report to remove the nonexistent citations.
The report is a sweeping document that puts much of the blame for childhood chronic diseases on nutrition and lifestyle, but also cites overmedication and the alleged pharma industry capture of regulatory bodies. According to the report, the pharma industry spent some $4.7 billion from 1999 to 2018 on lobbying at the federal level, “more than any other industry.”
This relationship between the industry and the bodies that are supposed to keep them in check, according to the report, has led to the “systematic distortion of scientific literature, regulatory processes, clinical practices, and public discourse by pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, all aimed at maximizing profits.” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has previously publicly spoken against this, scolding FDA staff in a site visit in April for allegedly being a “sock puppet” to the industry.
The MAHA report outlines steps forward for the U.S., including pointed policy recommendations, some of which may already be in motion.
The report, for instance, places much scrutiny on vaccines, many of which it claims are backed by studies with “small participant groups” and without “inert placebo-controlled trials.” This tracks with recent high-level changes in vaccine guidelines, including the removal of the COVID-19 vaccine from the CDC’s recommended schedule for healthy children and healthy pregnant women, and the FDA’s new risk-based strategy for approving new COVID-19 vaccines.
