Kennedy’s MAHA release a bit embarrassing
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, JR released his much-anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” report on May 22. The Secretary, who is on record against many immunizations, flouridated water, and quite a few other positions considered controversial, had promised a sort of roadmap to help the country’s children get healthier. Unfortunately, there were a few problems with it.
The highly anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) report was released on May 22 by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the presidential commission tasked with assessing drivers of childhood chronic disease.
As would any reputable paper on human health, corroborating studies were noted. Only one small problem – many of the studies didn’t exist.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the mishaps as “formatting issues” during a press briefing Thursday.
Formatting errors? Non-existent studies? That is the rosiest possible explanation… at best.
Noah Kreski, a Columbia University researcher listed as an author of a paper on adolescent anxiety and depression during the Covid-19 pandemic, told AFP the paper is “not one of our studies” and “doesn’t appear to be a study that exists at all.”
The initial citation included a link that purported to send users to an article in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, but it was broken.
Jim Michalski, a spokesman for JAMA Network, said it “was not published in JAMA Pediatrics or in any JAMA Network journal.”
Not the only error:
Columbia University epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who was also listed as an author of the supposed JAMA study, told AFP she does research on the topic but does not know where the statistics credited to her came from, and that she “did not write that paper.”
Guohua Li, another Columbia University professor apparently named in the citation, said the reference is “totally fabricated” and that he does not even know Kreski.
AFP also spoke with Harold Farber, pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine, who said the paper attributed to him “does not exist” nor had he ever collaborated with the co-authors credited in the original MAHA report.
Similarly, Brian McNeill, spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, confirmed that professor Robert Findling did not author a paper the report says he wrote about advertising of psychotropic medications for youth.
A fourth paper on ADHD medication was also not published in the journal Pediatrics in 2008 as claimed, according to the journal’s publisher, the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Let’s try that again…”formatting errors?” Hard to believe that excuse could get lamer…but it did.
At her briefing, Leavitt declined to answer how the report was produced and whether artificial intelligence tools may have been used to craft it, directing those questions back to HHS.
All of the citations investigated by AFP were replaced with links to real sources in the updated version, though in one case, purported research was supplanted by an article from The New York Times. AFP
As NOTUS first reported on Thursday, several of the studies cited in the report do not exist at all, including one called “Overprescribing of Oral Corticosteroids for Children With Asthma,” which was used to argue that doctors are giving kids too much medicine. This “study” has never been referenced anywhere outside the MAHA report.
The report argued, in one case, that a 40-fold increase in bipolar disorder and ADHD diagnoses in children between 1994 to 2003 was propelled by loosened criteria in a fifth edition of a guide used by psychiatrists, per the NYT. But that fifth edition, it turns out, didn’t come out until 2013.
The Washington Post found that 37 of the paper’s 522 footnotes are inexplicably repeated multiple times. Some of the citations also include an “oaicite” appended to the URLs, which refers to OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. This is a “definitive sign” that the research was gathered using an AI, WaPo concluded.Futurism
How nice – real sources. Kennedy also catches fire for his stance on autism:
Since taking office, he has ordered the National Institutes of Health to probe the causes of autism — a condition he has long falsely tied to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The report’s chronic disease references appear to nod to that same disproven theory, discredited by numerous studies since the idea first aired in a late 1990s paper based on falsified data. AFP
If you prefer to do your own take on that last, do a search for MMR “autism Lancet Wakefield” – you will find quite a bit available.
Category: Science and Technology