Latest news with #TheMAHAReport:MakingOurChildrenHealthyAgain
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
As more fake citations emerge in the ‘MAHA' report, White House struggles with a defense
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.' In a normal administration functioning in a healthy political environment, a fiasco like this would lead to multiple resignations. But in the Trump era, officials play the game by a different set of rules. 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. In case this isn't obvious, 'formatting issues' tend to refer to things such as page margins, font size or perhaps misnumbered pages. To describe references to nonexistent scientific research, in an official federal document related to public health policy, as 'some formatting issues' is like saying the Titanic confronted 'some evening issues.' 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. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
The Trump administration's ‘MAHA Report' cites nonexistent scientific studies
After Donald Trump and his White House team unveiled 'The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again' last week, The New York Times noted, 'The document echoes talking points Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed for decades.' That was among the obvious red flags surrounding the report. Kennedy is, after all, notorious for pushing unscientific conspiracy theories and claiming, among other things, that Wi-Fi causes 'leaky brain.' Any document reflecting his ideas related to health care policy should reflexively be treated with skepticism. With this in mind, no one was especially surprised when the White House report started crumbling under scrutiny. The Washington Post reported, 'Some of the report's suggestions ... stretched the limits of science, medical experts said. Several sections of the report offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.' That was last week. This week, NOTUS advanced these concerns, reporting that the administration's 'Make America Healthy Again' report 'misinterprets some studies and cites others that don't exist, according to the listed authors.' Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his 'Make America Healthy Again' Commission report harnesses 'gold-standard' science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions. Seven of the cited sources don't appear to exist at all. ... NOTUS also found serious issues with how the report interpreted some of the existing studies it cites. For example, the administration's document listed epidemiologist Katherine Keyes as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents — except she didn't write it. 'The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,' Keyes told NOTUS. '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.' NOTUS' report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added, 'As the Trump administration cuts research funding for federal health agencies and academic institutions and rejects the scientific consensus on issues like vaccines and gender-affirming care, the issues with its much-heralded MAHA report could indicate lessening concern for scientific accuracy at the highest levels of the federal government.' Yes. Yes, it could. I would gladly make note of the defense of the MAHA document from Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services, but at least so far, neither the controversial secretary nor the Cabinet agency he ostensibly leads has commented on these new allegations. HHS did not respond to NOTUS' request for comment on the citation inconsistencies, the outlet reported. Of course, given Kennedy's recent track record, there's no reason to assume he'd be able to answer questions about the document anyway. To be sure, the traditional norms surrounding American politics have been largely shattered, but in a situation like this one, it's worth emphasizing that in a normal and healthy political system, if officials released a much-hyped report on public health policy, and scrutiny found that the document relied on scientific sources that didn't exist, those officials would be expected to resign — quickly. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr. pushes a misguided ‘do your own research' line as he unveils MAHA report
Donald Trump and his White House team unveiled 'The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again' to some fanfare on Thursday afternoon, and as The New York Times noted, 'The document echoes talking points Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed for decades.' With this in mind, few were surprised when the White House report started crumbling under scrutiny. The Washington Post reported, 'Some of the report's suggestions ... stretched the limits of science, medical experts said. Several sections of the report offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.' But also of interest was what RFK Jr. had to say shortly after the document reached the public. NBC News reported: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who released a long-awaited report on the causes of chronic disease in children, said in an interview with CNN tonight that people should be skeptical of 'any medical advice' and that 'they need to do their own research.' This, alas, is not uncommon advice from the secretary of health and human services. In fact, about a month ago, Kennedy sat down with Phil McGraw, the television personality known as 'Dr. Phil,' and the Cabinet secretary told the host that he advises parents of newborns to 'do your own research' before vaccinating their infants. At a superficial level, this might even seem compelling to some people, at least at first blush. People do research online all the time, looking up movie reviews or the best place to buy a toaster, so what's wrong with people taking advantage of available resources when making decisions on matters related to science and health care? In case the answer to this question isn't obvious, The Washington Post's Monica Hesse wrote a compelling column on this a few weeks ago. It probably goes without saying, but just in case: Researching a vaccine is substantially more complicated than researching a stroller. You research strollers by typing 'best strollers' into Wirecutter and buying whichever one has cupholders. You research a vaccine by getting a PhD in immunology or cellular and molecular biology, acquiring a lab in which you can conduct months or years worth of double-blind clinical trials, publishing your findings in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and then patiently navigating the government and industry regulations that are required to make sure your vaccine is safe and effective. Quite right. When the United States has a health secretary who talks about public health issues as if they're 'Choose Your Own Adventure' novels, it's a reminder that the country has the wrong health secretary. I, for example, don't have a background in medicine or scientific research. So I'm not in a position to go online and make competent assessments on matters related to immunology. Instead, I rely on the scientific consensus crafted by knowledgeable and experienced scientific professionals, whose work has been subject to extensive scrutiny by other knowledgeable and experienced scientific professionals. In other words, I can't do my own research, because I'm not qualified to do that research. People who know what they're talking about can do their own research, at which point the scientific canon takes shape. RFK Jr. appears to approach these issues with the assumption that the scientific canon is inherently suspect because it's crafted by those who reject his conspiratorial and unscientific perspective. When he advises Americans to 'do their own research,' it's a recommendation rooted in the idea that people should poke around the internet until they find sites that give them information that seems true — or that they want to be true. But that's not a responsible approach to public health. On the contrary, it's madness. As my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem recently explained, 'Laypeople cannot understand more technical information about vaccine ingredients, efficacy reports or safety assessments on their own, since understanding that information requires specialized knowledge and a broader contextual understanding of the diseases they guard against. Instead, people have to rely on expert intermediaries to interpret and explain that information for them.' That the incumbent U.S. secretary of health and human services doesn't understand this fact should be the source of widespread concern. This article was originally published on
