The Bulwark - RFK's Health Report Is a Mess

[ihaveaquestion]

[enough]

1. NOTUS now says that the Report has been significantly corrected.

The MAHA Report Has Been Updated to Replace Citations That Didn’t Exist
An updated version of the report replaces citations, after the White House blamed errors on “formatting.”

By Margaret Manto
May 29, 2025 04:54 PM
The White House is downplaying the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report’s citation issues, even as it scrambles to fix them.

A NOTUS investigation published Thursday found that at least seven of the report’s citations appeared to not actually exist. The White House publicly blamed any problems with the report on “formatting issues.”

Hours later, a new version of the MAHA report was published on the White House website with all seven of those citations replaced — five with completely different references and two with references to real studies written by the same authors of the nonexistent earlier citations.

More at link.
https://www.notus.org/health-science/maha-report-update-citations

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Maddow Blog-As more fake citations emerge in the 'MAHA' report, White House struggles with a defense

To describe references to nonexistent scientific research as “some formatting issues” is like saying the Titanic confronted “some evening issues.”

As more fake citations emerge in the ‘MAHA’ report, White House struggles with a defense
To describe references to nonexistent scientific research as “some formatting issues” is like saying the Titanic confronted “some evening issues.” www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Democracy Skies in Blueness - Resist (@democracyblue.bsky.social) 2025-05-30T13:28:42.960Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/fake-citations-emerge-maha-report-white-house-struggles-defense-rcna209915

Almost immediately after Donald Trump and his White House team unveiled “The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again” last week, problems emerged. The Washington Post reported, for example, that some of the report’s suggestions “stretched the limits of science,” and offered “misleading representations” of scientific research.

A week later, a devastating report published by NOTUS advanced the underlying story considerably, highlighting the unambiguous fact that the MAHA document “misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.” Soon after, The New York Times identified “additional faulty references” in the report. From the Times’ article:

The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues. But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.

While there’s been no official explanation for how, exactly, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team managed to release a much-hyped official document with fake citations, multiple reports noted the likely culprit. As The Washington Post reported, “Some of the citations ... appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.”

.....For example, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was pressed for some kind of explanation for the MAHA debacle. The president’s chief spokesperson responded by claiming there were “some formatting issues” with the document.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iu4j537hox5huj4bwnwgub4z/post/3lqdc55klup2i

Link to tweet

.....Leavitt nevertheless added that the White House has “complete confidence” in Kennedy. She didn’t elaborate as to why, exactly, Kennedy remains in the president’s good graces, though it appears to have something to do with Trump’s indifference to whether the conspiracy theorist leading the Department of Health and Human Services gets things right or wrong.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. The MAHA Report Has Been Updated With Fresh Errors

One psychologist who is newly cited in the report said the updated reference misconstrues his research.

Link to tweet

https://www.notus.org/health-science/maha-report-update-citation-errors

The Trump administration’s clean up of the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission’s hallmark and error-riddled report is opening new questions about how the report’s authors drew some of its sweeping conclusions about the state of Americans’ health.

At least 18 of the original report’s citations have been edited or completely swapped out for new references since NOTUS first revealed the errors Thursday morning. While some of the original report’s inconsistencies have been changed, a few of the new updated citations continue to misinterpret scientific studies......

But as reporters found more inaccuracies within the report on Thursday, the White House stopped denoting changes and removed references to past corrections. Officials continued to update the report throughout the night to remove AI chatbot fingerprints and other errors, according to The Washington Post.

Another “correction” to address a nonexistent study cited in the original is still misstating the credited researcher’s conclusion, he told NOTUS.

The report initially cited a pulmonologist (though not a real paper he contributed to) to support the claim that “an estimated 25-40% of mild cases” of asthma are overprescribed drugs.

Pulmonologist Harold J. Farber acknowledged he did find overprescription in a very limited study on one Medicaid-managed care program in Texas, which used data from 2011 to 2015. But at the time, he rejected the idea that those results were at all generalizable before the report was updated.

This study would never survive fact checking and the peer review process used by real scientific publications. That is why Bob aka rfk jr. does not like these publications