Latest news with #NOTUS
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr.'s Disastrous MAHA Report Seems to Have Been Written Using AI
A report on children's health from Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' commission referenced fake research and misinterpreted studies to support their agenda. It also included citation errors, like crediting the wrong author on a study. To make things worse, the report appears to have been written using artificial intelligence, according to The Washington Post. The revelation comes just weeks after Kennedy, the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, touted the department's commitment to using AI liberally. 'The AI revolution has arrived,' Kennedy told lawmakers earlier this month. He said, 'We are very, very aggressively implementing AI,' adding: 'We brought very, very high-quality, caliber people from Silicon Valley.' Kennedy pledged to use AI to speed up clinical trials for drug testing and offering it as a way for people to avoid going to the emergency rooms in rural areas with shortages of doctors. The 'MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again,' looks at diet, technology usage, medication usage, and other factors that contribute to children's health. A key consequence of children's health issues, the report argues, is the majority would not be able to serve in the military, 'primarily due to obesity, poor physical fitness, and/or mental health challenges.' The report also argues that children are on too many medications, which aligns with RFK Jr.'s longtime diatribes against vaccines and drugmakers. The shoddy 'research' calls into question the report's validity. NOTUS first pointed out the study's many issues on Thursday, showing that seven cited studies don't exist. NOTUS also found issues with how the report interpreted its sources. 'The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,' epidemiologist Katherine Keyes told NOTUS of a reference that named her. 'We've certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.' Citations in particular show hallmark signs of AI usage, the Post found. These issues go beyond typical user error in writing somewhat annoying APA citations. For example, URLs in two citations include the term 'oaicite,' referencing OpenAI, which the Post calls a 'definitive sign' that the authors used AI. The report also cites articles that do not exist. For example, 'Direct-to-consumer advertising and the rise in ADHD medication use among children' sounds like it could be a real article, but it was fabricated. The report cited an article from psychiatry professor Robert Findling on a topic that he writes about, but the article does not exist. This is a sign of AI usage, because chatbots 'hallucinate,' as the Post says, cite studies that could be real but are not. Two citations for an article from U.S. News and World Report titled 'How much recess should kids get?' each credit a different author. But neither author is the one who actually wrote the article. Two citations for another article on recess do the same. AI chatbots are known to mix real references with false information, often described as hallucinations. For a statistic about overprescription for children with asthma, the report cites an article that does seem to exist, but that does not include the statistic. The lead author for the article in the citation is correct, but the co-authors are not — another error. The Post also identified a URL that no longer works. If AI is trained on older material, it can include outdated links. Another citation includes a quotation from the reference material, an error only someone who does not conceptually grasp citations — or a bot — would make. Rolling Stone also noticed that some citations are missing italicization and others are missing capitalization, which at the very least suggests an author without an academic background, a lazy author, or perhaps a bot. On Friday, NOTUS found that the report had been updated, adding in entire new errors. In the hours since the Post's story came out Friday night, the White House appears to have edited the report again to remove some of the evidence the article referenced. For example, 'oaicite' no longer appears anywhere in the HHS spokesman told the Post that 'minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation's children.' More from Rolling Stone John Oliver Slams RFK Jr.: 'Clearly in Way Over His Worm-Riddled Head' RFK Jr. Made Promising Statements on Long Covid. Too Bad the Rest of His Plans Undercut Them GOP Senator Blames Americans for Most of Their Health Problems Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Health
- Washington Post
The MAHA Report's AI fingerprints, annotated
The White House's 'Make America Healthy Again' report, which issued a dire warning about the forces responsible for Americans' declining life expectancy, bears hallmarks of the use of artificial intelligence in its citations. That appears to have garbled citations and invented studies that underpin the report's conclusions. Trump administration officials have been repeatedly revising and updating the report since Thursday as news outlets, beginning with NOTUS, have highlighted the discrepancies and evidence of nonexistent research.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr. Swaps Made-Up Studies in His Report for More Made-Up Studies
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s error-laden Make America Healthy Again report was updated Friday to remove citations to several non-existent studies—as well as some perfectly real ones—and replace them with citations that still make no sense, NOTUS reported. A NOTUS investigation published Thursday found that Kennedy's report taking aim at childhood vaccines, ultraprocessed foods, and pesticides listed studies that authors said were either misinterpreted or had never even occurred, leaving artificial intelligence researchers partially blaming AI for the errors. Several studies cited in the original report identified by NOTUS as nonexistent were all replaced Friday, as well as some studies with which NOTUS had not identified any issues. But in some cases, the replacements weren't much better. One study that the original report cited to support the claim that psychotherapy was a better treatment for children experiencing mental health issues than medication was replaced by another 'systemic overview' by Pim Cuijpers, a widely referenced psychologist in Amsterdam. But Cuijpers told NOTUS that his study covered the use of psychiatric medication in adults, not children. The two 'cannot be compared, and this reference is therefore not usable in adolescents,' Cuijpers wrote in an email to NOTUS. He also noted that there was no evidence to support the report's claim that psychotherapy was more effective than antidepressants for adolescents. This wasn't the only detail that undermined the report's arguments that American children were over-medicated. Cuijpers pointed out to NOTUS that the report's claim that 'antidepressant prescription rates in teens increased by 14-fold between 1987 and 2014' was a little less convincing considering that antidepressants were only developed in the late 1980s. 'So it can also be said that these drugs were simply used for the adolescents who could benefit from them,' Cuijpers told NOTUS. Another faulty citation attributing work to the incorrect authors was fixed, NOTUS reported, but the new study cited also failed to support the claim that 'since the 1970s, recess and physical education (PE) have steadily declined.' Yet another incorrect citation referred to pulmonologist Harold J. Farber, but didn't cite an actual paper he'd worked on to support the claim that 'an estimated 25-40% of mild cases' of asthma were overprescribed drugs. The new citation referred to Farber's actual study, which had been about a Medicaid-managed care program study in Texas, but Farber told NOTUS that the notion that those results applied to the general population required a 'tremendous leap of faith.' After the initial NOTUS report, so many changes were made to the documents to remove evidence of AI-chatbot handiwork that White House officials stopped denoting changes to the document, and deleted references to prior corrections, NOTUS reported.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
RFK Jr.'s MAHA Report Included Lots of Bogus Studies
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's much-anticipated Make America Healthy Again report is laden with errors and some of the cited authors said their 'studies' don't even exist, according to NOTUS. The 73-page document is the product of a presidential commission led by Kennedy to address the alarming rise in chronic diseases among American children. 'The initial mission of the Commission shall be to advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis,' the mission statement reads. The Trump administration proudly held the report up as 'a clear, evidence-based foundation for the policy interventions, institutional reforms, and societal shifts needed to reverse course.' This was despite some insiders being freaked out as to what the finished product would look like. A new article examining the report says it is laced with errors as trivial as broken links, all the way to misrepresented and even made-up research. The MAHA study cites over 500 works to support its assertions on issues ranging from vaccine safety to the dangers of ultra-processed foods. Seven of these citations don't even exist as real research, NOTUS reported. 'The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,' one expert, epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, told the title. She was linked to a study on anxiety in adolescents. The MAHA report states that the study is from the 12th issue of the 176th edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics. It isn't. No such study with that title exists in the 176th edition. Virginia Commonwealth University, where psychiatric researcher Robert L. Findling works, confirmed that a study about 'psychotropic medications for youth' was not authored by him. Another study about mental health medication in children appeared to have a completely made-up ADHD researcher, according to NOTUS. Likewise, pediatric pulmonologist Harold J. Farber denied writing a study with his name on it: 'Overprescribing of oral corticosteroids for children with asthma.' The document also wildly misconstrues some research. In one section, it states that mental health medication is less effective than therapy alone and cites Joanne McKenzie, a biostatistics professor at an Australian university and her team. 'We did not include psychotherapy in our review,' the author told NOTUS. She continued: 'We only compared the effectiveness of (new generation) antidepressants against each other, and against placebo.' 'The conclusions in the report are not accurate and the journal reference is incorrect,' another researcher, Mariana G. Figueiro, said. She added that she has some research that would have worked, making the decision to seemingly cherry-pick non-related studies even more puzzling. 'I was not aware of the choice, or else I would have suggested one of the other ones.' Sources previously told The Wall Street Journal that the report was largely shaped by Kennedy adviser Calley Means, who co-wrote a book on the dangers of pesticides with his sister, new Trump surgeon general nominee Dr. Casey Means. The Department of Health & Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
White House blames 'formatting' for errors in RFK Jr.'s MAHA report. Authors push back.
Citation errors and phantom research used as scientific evidence to bolster Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s landmark 'Make America Healthy Again' commission report were apparently due to 'formatting issues,' according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a commission that was tasked with investigating chronic illnesses and childhood diseases, which culminated in the 'Make Our Children Healthy Again' assessment that was published May 22. However, researchers listed in the report have since come forward saying the articles cited don't exist or were used to support facts that were inconsistent with their research. The errors were first reported by NOTUS. 'I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and the report will be updated,' Leavitt told reporters May 29. 'But it does not negate the substance of the report.' She also didn't say whether the report was generated by artificial intelligence, or AI, as some have questioned. Although it's difficult to determine whether scientific articles are generated or 'touched up' by AI, there are telling signs, said Yuan Luo, professor and chief AI officer at Northwestern University's clinical and translational sciences institute. Some of those signs may include citation gaps, factual inconsistencies and irrelevant conclusions derived from random research. MAHA report: RFK slams processed foods, pesticides, vaccines as harmful to kids The MAHA report erroneously said an article on the impact of light from computer monitors was published in the journal Pediatrics when it wasn't, according to the study's author Mariana Figueiro, a professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The report also cited Figueiro's research as evidence that electronic devices in children's bedrooms disrupted sleep onset. However, she said the study was on college students and researchers measured melatonin suppression, not sleep. 'The study is ours, but unfortunately, the conclusions in the report are not accurate and the journal reference is incorrect,' Figueiro told USA TODAY via email. 'We have other papers on the topic… but again, none of them were performed with children.' The MAHA report also cited Columbia University epidemiologist Katherine Keyes as first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. As first reported by NOTUS and confirmed by USA TODAY, Keyes said she did not write the paper cited by the MAHA report. 'I was surprised to see what seems to be an error in the citation of my work in the report, and it does make me concerned given that citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science,' Keyes told USA TODAY via email. Keyes has studied the topic and published a recent study in JAMA Network Open that adolescent girls had higher levels of depressive symptoms than boys, but her study's figures did not match what the MAHA report cited. She said her earlier research on depression and anxiety symptoms yielded results 'that are generally in the ballpark of the MAHA report, although I'm not sure where their exact ranges are drawn from.' Keyes said she would be happy to send information to the MAHA committee to correct the report, but she doesn't know where to reach the report's authors. Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, a site that tracks retractions in scientific journals and research, said the MAHA report seemed to share characteristics similar to other AI-generated work. AI papers 'tend to hallucinate references,' he said. 'They come up with references that share a lot of words and authors and even journals, journal names, but they're not real." HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the report has been updated to correct "minor citation and formatting errors." "But the substance of the MAHA report remains the same - a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation's children," he said. "Under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, our federal government is no longer ignoring this crisis, and it's time for the media to also focus on what matters." Oransky noted the MAHA report comes as Kennedy said he may prohibit government scientists from publishing research in major peer-reviewed medical journals such as JAMA, Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine 'because they're all corrupt.' Kennedy proposed an HHS publication where government scientists could publish research findings. "When scientific reform is weaponized to only denigrate science and scientists whose studies contradict your beliefs or your wishes, we get to a very dark place,' Oransky said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: RFK Jr.'s MAHA report errors: Was it AI or 'formatting issues?'
