White House MAHA Report Marred by AI-Generated Fake Citations and Errors

Trump officials downplay fake citations in high-profile report on children's health

References to phantom studies comes after White House pledge to practice "gold standard" science The White House is downplaying major citation errors in a sweeping report on chronic disease in children released last week by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission. The report, spearheaded by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited hundreds of studies and was billed as an example of "radical transparency" and "gold standard" science. But the nonprofit news publication NOTUS reported yesterday that multiple studies cited in the report -- which took aim at ultraprocessed foods, pesticides, prescription drugs, and childhood vaccines -- don't appear to exist. The outlet also identified dozens of other errors in the report's bibliography, including broken links, missing or incorrect authors, and incorrect issue numbers. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt brushed off the report's citation errors as "formatting issues," in response to a question from NOTUS at a news briefing on Thursday. She went on to defend Kennedy and his team, calling the MAHA report "one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government." Hours later, an updated version of the MAHA report was published on the White House website with the fictitious citations initially flagged by NOTUS replaced with new references, which appear to be real sources. "Minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in an emailed statement, "but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same." Several researchers whose supposed work was cited in the MAHA report confirmed to NOTUS that the cited papers didn't exist. Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who is listed in the MAHA report as the first author of a study on anxiety and adolescents, has done research on the topic before but told NOTUS she had never written the specific paper cited in the report. "The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with." Others whose studies were correctly cited said the report had mischaracterized their findings. A paper by Mariana Figueiro, a researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who studies the effect of light on human health, was cited as evidence that screen time disrupts children's sleep -- even though the study was conducted in college students and didn't directly measure sleep. As Figuero told USA Today, "The study is ours, but unfortunately, the conclusions in the report are not accurate and the journal reference is incorrect." Separate investigations by The New York Times and The Washington Post suggested that the authors of the report, whose names Kennedy has declined to make public, may have used generative artificial intelligence (AI). The NYT identified additional faulty references, which Ivan Oransky -- a medical journalism professor at New York University and co-founder of Retraction Watch -- says may reflect the use of AI as the technology is known to "hallucinate," or invent nonexistent material. The Post reported that some of the references in the MAHA report included "oaicite" markers attached to their URLs -- a strong indicator that AI was used to create them. The inclusion of fake citations doesn't necessarily mean statements in the report are incorrect, but critics say it raises questions about HHS's supposed commitment to scientific rigor: "It's the kind of thing that gets a senior researcher into deep trouble, potentially losing their funding," Art Caplan, a bioethicist at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, tells CNN. "It's the kind of thing that leads to a student getting an F. It's inexcusable." Attorneys have previously faced sanctions for using fictitious case citations created by ChatGPT in legal briefs. Leavitt and HHS both declined to respond to questions about whether AI had been used to create the document. Problems with the MAHA report's integrity came to light even as Kennedy has threatened to prevent government scientists from publishing in leading medical journals like The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, and JAMA, which he claims are "corrupt" and controlled by pharmaceutical companies. Kennedy has instead proposed a state-run alternative. Discovery of the fake citations also came just days after President Donald Trump unveiled an executive order that called for "Restoring Gold Science Standards" to government activities. Among other things, it orders agencies to develop policies that ensure that they "communicate scientific data accurately," and empowers agency officials to punish employees who violate the policies. One goal, Trump wrote, is to ensure that "Federal decisions are informed by the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available."

RFK Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' report seems riddled with AI slop

Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews. There are some questionable sources underpinning Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial "Make America Healthy Again" commission report. Signs point to AI tomfoolery, and the use of ChatGPT specifically, which calls into question the veracity of the White House report meant to address reasons for the decline in US life expectancy. An investigation by NOTUS found dozens of errors in the MAHA report, including broken links, wrong issue numbers, and missing or incorrect authors. Some studies were misstated to back up the report's conclusions, or more damningly, didn't exist at all. At least seven of the cited sources were entirely fictitious, according to NOTUS. Another investigation by The Washington Post found that at least 37 of the 522 citations appeared multiple times throughout the report. Notably, the URLs of several references included "oaicite," a marker that OpenAI applies to responses provided by artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT, which strongly suggests its use to develop the report Generative AI tools have a tendency to spit out false or incorrect information, known as "hallucinations." That would certainly explain the various errors throughout the report -- chatbots have been found responsible for similar citation issues in legal filings submitted by AI experts and even the companies building the models. Nevertheless, RFK Jr has long advocated for the "AI Revolution," and announced during a House Committee meeting in May that "we are already using these new technologies to manage health care data more efficiently and securely." In a briefing on Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to concerns about the accuracy of the citations while evading any mention of AI tools. Leavitt described the errors as "formatting issues" and defended the health report for being "backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government." The Washington Post notes that the MAHA report file was updated on Thursday to remove some of the oaicite markers and replace some of the non-existent sources with alternative citations. In a statement given to the publication, Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said "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."

White House Health Report Included Fake Citations

Sign up for the Well newsletter, for Times subscribers only. Essential news and guidance to live your healthiest life. Try it for 4 weeks. 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. "It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren't being followed," said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author. The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections. Dr. Ivan Oransky -- who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research -- said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legal filings and more. Sign up to get Dani Blum's articles emailed to you. Dani Blum is a health reporter focusing on news and trends. Get it sent to your inbox. Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, "we've seen this particular movie before, and it's unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be." Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the report had relied on A.I., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, did not answer a question about the source of the fabricated references and downplayed them as "minor citation and formatting errors." She said that "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." The false references do not necessarily mean the underlying facts in the report are incorrect. But they indicate a lack of rigorous review and verification of the report and its bibliography before it was released, Dr. Oransky said. "Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification," he said, adding: "There's supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this." Researchers previously told The Times that they agreed with many of the report's points, like its criticism of synthetic chemicals in the U.S. food supply and of the prevalence of ultraprocessed foods. (An early copy of the report shared with reporters did not include citations.) The Latest on the Trump Administration Trump Gives Clemency to More Than Two Dozen, Including Political Allies Trump Commutes Federal Life Sentences of Larry Hoover, Chicago Gang Leader Create your free account and enjoy unlimited access -- free for 7 days. Start free trial Deal Maker or Duped? Trump's Embrace of Putin Shows Few Results. A Disillusioned Musk, Distanced From Trump, Says He's Exiting Washington 16 States Sue Trump Over $1.4 Billion in Science Cuts Canada Wants to Kill 400 Ostriches. Kennedy and Dr. Oz Want to Save Them. Trump Loses Another Battle in His War Against Elite Law Firms House Bill Takes Aim at Tax Break for Sports Owners U.S. Ships Championed by Trump Cost 5 Times as Much as Asian Ones But doctors have disagreed with some of the report's other suggestions, including that routine childhood vaccines may be harmful -- which scientists say is based on an incorrect understanding of immunology. The news that some citations were fake further undermines confidence in the report's findings, Dr. Keyes said. She noted that her research had indeed shown that rates of depression and anxiety were rising among adolescents, as the report said they were. But the faulty citation "certainly makes me concerned about the evidence base that conclusions are being drawn from," she said. The report also originally cited a paper on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs published in The Lancet in 2005. A paper with that title does exist, but it was a perspective piece from an expert, not a study. It was published in a different journal five years earlier, and was not written by the cited author. Another citation incorrectly referred to a paper on the link between sleep, inflammation and insulin sensitivity. The citation included a co-author who did not work on the paper, and omitted a researcher who did; it also listed the wrong journal. The citation has now been corrected, but Thirumagal Kanagasabai, a researcher in Toronto and the lead author on the paper, said she was shocked an incorrect citation had made it in there in the first place. "I just don't understand that," she said. "How could it get mixed up?" The report also pointed to what it said was a 2009 paper in The Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology by "Findling, R.L., et al.," on the advertising of psychiatric medications. A spokesman for Virginia Commonwealth University, where Dr. Robert L. Findling works as a professor of psychiatry, said Dr. Findling had not written the article. Experts said that even some correctly cited papers were inaccurately summarized. For example, the report said that the fifth edition of a guide used by psychiatrists to classify mental health conditions had loosened criteria for A.D.H.D. and bipolar disorder, driving a 40-fold increase in diagnoses in children from 1994 to 2003. But that edition was not published until 2013. The diagnoses mentioned in the cited study would have been made using an earlier version. In addition, the data appeared to originate from a 2007 study that refers to an approximately 40-fold increase in the diagnosis of bipolar disorder among youth from 1994 to 2003, but does not mention increases in A.D.H.D. prevalence. Part of what makes the errors so striking, Dr. Kanagasabai said, is that the importance of citations is drilled into young researchers even in the earliest stages of their careers. "You want to always go back to the original source, and you want to make sure that source is correct," she said. Christina Caron contributed reporting.

White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say

The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans' life expectancy. Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House's sweeping "MAHA Report" appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday. Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Washington Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning. Some references include "oaicite" attached to URLs -- a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of "oaicite" is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company. A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate -- as well as the tendency to "hallucinate" studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real. AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report. "Frankly, that's shoddy work," he said. "We deserve better." "The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again," which addressed the root causes of America's lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump. It blames exposure to environmental toxins, poor nutrition and increased screen time for a decline in Americans' life expectancy. One reference in the initial version of the report cited a study entitled "Overprescribing of Oral Corticosteroids for Children With Asthma" to buttress the idea that children are over-medicated. But that study didn't appear to exist. There is a similar Pediatrics article from 2017 with the same first author but different co-authors. Later Thursday, that Pediatrics article was swapped in for the apparently nonexistent study in the version of the report available online. An article credited to U.S. News & World Report about children's recess and exercise time was initially cited twice to support claims of declining physical activity among U.S. children, once with only part of the link shown. It listed Mlynek, A. and Spiegel, S. as different authors. Neither referred to Kate Rix, who wrote the story. Neither Mlynek nor Spiegel appear to be actual reporters for the publication. As of Thursday evening, Rix had been swapped in as the author on one of the references in the version of the report available online. Nearly half of the 522 citations in the initial version of the report included links to articles or studies. But a Post analysis of all the report's references found that at least 21 of those links were dead. Former governor and current New York City mayoral front-runner Andrew Cuomo was caught up in controversy last month after a housing policy report he issued used ChatGPT and garbled a reference. Attorneys have faced sanctions for using nonexistent case citations created by ChatGPT in legal briefs. The garbled scientific citations betray subpar science and undermine the credibility of the report, said Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. "This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point," he said. "It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion, because you can't believe what's in it." When asked about the nonexistent citations at a news briefing Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House has "complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS." "I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA Report that are being addressed, and the report will be updated, but it does not negate the substance of the report, which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government, and is backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government," Leavitt said. At some point between 1 and 2:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, the MAHA Report file was updated on the White House site to remove mentions of "corrected hyperlinks" and one of the "oaicite" markers. Another "oaicite" marker, attached to a New York Times Wirecutter story about baby formula, was still present in the document until it was removed Thursday evening. The White House continued to update the report into the night. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said 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." "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," Nixon said. Kennedy has long vowed to use AI to make America's health care better and more efficient, recently stating in a congressional hearing that he had even seen an AI nurse prototype "that could revolutionize health delivery in rural areas." Peter Lurie, president of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, said he was not surprised by the presence of possible AI markers in the report. Lurie said he had asked his own staff to look into it after noticing that the report linked to one of his organization's fact sheets but credited the Department of Agriculture and HHS as the authors. "The idea that they would envelop themselves in the shroud of scientific excellence while producing a report that relies heavily on AI is just shockingly hypocritical," said Lurie, who was a top Food and Drug Administration official in the Obama administration, where he wrote such government reports. There are many pitfalls in modern AI, which is "happy to make up citations," said Steven Piantadosi, a professor in psychology and neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley. "The problem with current AI is that it's not trustworthy, so it's just based on statistical associations and dependencies," he said. "It has no notion of ground truth, no notion of ... a rigorous logical or statistical argument. It has no notions of evidence and how strongly to weigh one kind of evidence versus another. " The Post previously reported that the document stretched the boundaries of science with some of its conclusions. Several sections offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.

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. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said 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." This is how The Washington Post, in consultation with AI experts, detected the use of artificial intelligence in the initial version of the report provided to journalists.

RFK Jr's "Make America Healthy Again" Report Cites Studies That Don't Exist, in Clear Sign of AI Generated Slop

Last week, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released a controversial "Make America Healthy Again" Commission report. The report was already criticized for blaming the decline in Americans' health woes on discredited scapegoats such as cell phone radiation and the "overmedicalization of kids." Now it turns out the report was also relying on some extremely questionable sources to back up its claims -- and quite possibly the sloppy use of generative AI. As the Allbritton Journalism Institute's education organization, NOTUS, found in its investigation, many of the report's citations are riddled with errors. Some don't appear to exist at all. While there's no definitive proof that Kennedy's department made use of generative AI, the results certainly bear all of the hallmarks of AI chatbots like ChatGPT. We've already come across countless examples of AI-hallucinated citations ending up in important documents, from law firms being caught passing around bogus AI slop to scientific literature riddled with references to papers that don't exist. Like Kennedy, the White House has also been accused of using AI to draft Donald Trump's storm of executive orders. The MAHA Commission report is, to put it lightly, extremely sketchy. According to NOTUS, of the more than 500 studies and other sources listed in the document, at least seven don't exist. Other citations include broken links -- yet another hallmark sign of AI hallucinations -- while others misstate conclusions. Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, whose name was listed on a seemingly nonexistent study on anxiety in adolescents that was cited by the report, told NOTUS that the "paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with." "We've certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that coauthor group, or with that title," she said. Two other citations, which allegedly were "broadly illustrative" of how direct-to-consumer drug ads lead to more ADHD and antidepressant prescriptions for kids, were also completely made up, NOTUS found. Other citations included grossly overgeneralized conclusions. "It is a tremendous leap of faith to generalize from a study in one Medicaid managed care program in Texas using 2011 to 2015 data to national care patterns in 2025," pediatric pulmonologist Harold Farber, whose study was cited in the report, told NOTUS. It's an especially troubling development, considering the Trump administration's broader war against science, undermining long-established evidence like the effectiveness of vaccines and gutting important scientific funding. The situation has gotten so bad, a Nature poll revealed last month, that the majority of scientists are now considering leaving the United States. Kennedy, who is severely underqualified for his role as secretary of health, admitted during a recent appearance before Congress that nobody "should be taking advice, medical advice from me." The noted anti-vaxxer has directed health authorities to investigate nonexistent links between vaccines and autism and repeatedly refused to acknowledge the effectiveness of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot amid a devastating and preventable measles outbreak. In other words, the apparent use of generative AI for a 73-page commission report is just the tip of the iceberg, showcasing a baffling degree of carelessness and a desire to push an agenda that isn't built on any credible scientific evidence. "AI is useful for many things," science communicator Joe Hanson wrote in a post on Bluesky. "Making or guiding government policy is not one of them!" "Seems like the kind of thing someone might do if they were interested in publishing propaganda to support a particular agenda rather than letting science guide their health policy," he added.

The AI Slop Scandal Around the MAHA Report Is Getting Worse

It came to light this week that a new government report from the "Make America Healthy Again" Commission led by Robert F Kennedy Jr. contained botched citations for scientific papers that didn't exist. This is almost certainly a sign that some form of generative AI was involved to draft a very consequential piece of medical agenda-setting, coming out of the US's top health agency, the Department of Health and Human Services. Now, some additional reporting suggests that the paper's flaws go even deeper -- yes, even deeper than allegedly relying on a technology known for making stuff up and then being surprised that it made stuff up. But first, let's highlight how the White House finally decided to respond to the criticism of the report, which has been "very poorly and not convincingly at all." On Thursday, the White House said that it would fix the errors in the government report -- and it did, releasing a new version with corrected citations. But press secretary Karoline Leavitt also took the opportunity to construe the affair as the press getting worked up about a few errant typos. "I understand there was some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and the report will be updated," Leavitt told reporters during a press briefing, as quoted by the Associated Press. "But it does not negate the substance of the report." "Minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected," HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told the AP in a statement. Led by noted anti-vaxxer and all-around crackpot RKF Jr., the "MAHA Report" purports to be a tell-all on why Americans, and especially children, are so unhealthy. Both Leavitt and Nixon described the report as "transformative." That's a questionable claim. 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. Lawyers have been sanctioned for similar behavior in court. It gets dumber. 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. And the flaws go beyond bogus citations, or "minor" perils of "formatting," in Leavitt's parlance. As experts told the NYT, some of the papers that were correctly cited were still inaccurately summarized -- if in fact they weren't being deliberately misconstrued. 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. And that "40-fold increase" the report touted appears to come from a 2007 study which makes zero mention of an uptick in ADHD. Even if you could somehow excuse using an AI chatbot to help speed up composing what's supposed to be the cynosure of the US's public health policy going forward, the sheer levels of sloppiness on display can only leave you to conclude that either RFK and his lackeys have no idea what they're doing and have no business writing a serious scientific document, or that they're trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public, cynical enough to ask an AI model to conjure up studies to fit whatever narrative they're peddling. "This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point," Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told WaPo. "It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion, because you can't believe what's in it."

Trump admin corrects RFK Jr.'s MAHA report after citation errors

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images The Trump administration on Thursday corrected several citations in its "Make America Healthy Again" report, adding to scrutiny of its scientific rigor. The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., paints a dire picture of children's health in the United States. The corrections came after the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS identified several citations referencing papers that did not exist. NBC News verified that four such papers were nonexistent. One citation listed in the report as a December 2022 study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics on changes in mental health and substance use among adolescents during the pandemic does not appear in that journal issue. Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist at Columbia University listed as the study's first author, said the research was not hers. "I can confirm that I, and my co-authors, did not write that paper," Keyes told NBC News via email. "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." The citation was replaced Thursday with a reference to a report on mental health and substance use in adolescents from KFF, a health policy research organization. The text of the report was also edited slightly. Whereas the original version said that 20%-25% of adolescents reported anxiety symptoms and 15%-20% reported depressive symptoms, the updated version changed those percentages to 20% and more than 15%. The citation errors add to the strange nature of the MAHA report, released last week by the White House, which has no public authors and echoes many of the passion projects of its chair, Kennedy. The commission in charge of the report consists of high-ranking officials across various federal agencies, only two of whom are medical doctors. The report, which stretches more than 70 pages, claims to identify four main causes of chronic diseases in children: ultraprocessed food, environmental toxins, the overprescribing of medications and sedentary, technology-driven lifestyles. It does not mention the leading cause of children's deaths in the country: guns. The original version contained 522 citations, seven of which mentioned papers that could not be found online or in scientific journals, according to NOTUS. The false citations sparked some speculation that generative AI may have been used in the creation of the report. The Washington Post reported that the website URLs of some references included "oaicite," which OpenAI's systems are known to add to citations. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday attributed the false citations to formatting issues. Andrew Nixon, communications director for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement: "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." "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," he added. Two other citations in the MAHA report, referencing studies on advertising and medication use in children, did not appear in either of the scientific journals cited. The report listed the lead author of one of those papers as psychiatric researcher Robert Findling, but a spokesperson at Virginia Commonwealth University said Findling was not behind the research. Both citations were edited out of the MAHA report Thursday. The citation that referenced Findling now directs to a 2006 paper on trends in the use of psychotropic medications. The other citation links to a 2013 New York Times article. A fourth citation that references the overprescribing of corticosteroids for children with asthma also does not correspond to any published work. It was replaced Thursday with a reference to a study from the same researcher, pediatric pulmonologist Harold Farber. Language stating that "an estimated 25-40% of mild cases are overprescribed" was removed from the report and replaced with the line: "There is evidence of overprescription of oral corticosteroids for mild cases of asthma." Nixon declined to answer questions about who at HHS had authored the report or what tools may have been used in its creation. Metadata embedded in the PDF of the report lists its author as Heidi Overton, a medical doctor and deputy director in the White House Domestic Policy Council. Overton formerly served as chief policy officer at America First Policy Institute's Center for a Healthy America, a right-wing think tank. She did not respond to requests for comment. Many public health experts have noted that the MAHA report addresses real issues like the link between ultraprocessed foods and obesity or cancer. But some researchers have said it overstates conclusions and offers little in the way of solutions. In a blog post Wednesday, researchers at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, criticized the report's lack of input from medical or scientific professionals. According to the researchers, "the data in the report bears little relationship to its conclusions." They highlighted several instances where they said the report lacked context or misrepresented data. For instance, the report refers to childhood obesity as a "worsening health crisis," but also features a graph showing that the rate of childhood obesity in the U.S. remained relatively stable over the last 20 years. The MAHA report also warns that childhood cancer rates are rising, but does not mention that cancer deaths among that population are declining. NOTUS similarly reported Wednesday that there were "serious issues with how the report interpreted some of the existing studies it cites." The outlet pointed to a 2011 study cited as evidence that evening screen time from electronic devices disrupted sleep onset in children. The study's author, Mariana Figueiro, told NBC News that it was inaccurate to link that particular paper with that conclusion. "The conclusions in the MAHA report are incorrect and misrepresented our findings," Figueiro, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said via email. "We looked at melatonin suppression, not sleep onset. We also used college students, not children as subjects. Finally, the journal name was incorrect." The citation was replaced Thursday with a 2021 review, which found that electronic media use was associated with less sleep in children in Western countries.

White House blames 'formatting' for errors in RFK Jr.'s MAHA report. Authors push back.

President Donald Trump attended the "Make America Healthy Again" event where the MAHA commission released its report. 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 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. 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.

Did RFK Jr.'s Crew Use AI to Write Error-Filled MAHA Report?

Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted the findings of the 73-page report from the presidential commission to Make America Healthy Again that assessed the root causes of chronic disease in children. The report laid the blame for the crisis on numerous factors including poor diet, chronic stress, environmental chemicals, lack of physical activity, and overmedicalization. "We will end the childhood chronic disease crisis by attacking its root causes head-on -- not just managing its symptoms," Kennedy said in a statement. "We will follow the truth wherever it leads, uphold rigorous science, and drive bold policies that put the health, development, and future of every child first. But new reporting is casting doubt on the highly-promoted MAHA report and the veracity of its cited sources. According to NOTUS, much of the report's sourcing is full of errors and inconsistencies including the referencing of seven studies and papers that seemingly do not exist. In one instance, a footnote lists a paper entitled "Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic" that was allegedly published in JAMA Pediatrics, a renowned medical journal. However, the provided link to the paper doesn't work. Additionally. NOTUS contacted Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist listed as one of the authors of the paper and she confirmed that no such paper exists. "The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with," she told the outlet in an email. "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." In another example, the report cited a piece entitled "Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern" that was said to have been authored by Robert L. Findling, a psychiatric researcher. But when NOTUS contacted his employer Virginia Commonwealth University, a spokesman confirmed that Findling did not write the referenced article. During a press briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed NOTUS's reporting on the MAHA report, expressing confidence in its findings. "We have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS. I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and the report will be updated," she said. "But it does not negate the substance of the report which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government." The paper's seemingly invented citations have prompted speculation that some form of artificial intelligence might've been utilized while preparing the report. But when asked if A.I. was used to assemble the report, Leavitt deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services.

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 report. An 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."

Trump administration 'MAHA' health report cited nonexistent studies

(Reuters) - A highly-publicized U.S. government report on the health of American children referenced scientific studies that did not exist among citations to support its conclusions in what the White House said were "formatting issues" on Thursday. The report produced by the Make America Healthy Again Commission, named after the slogan aligned with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was released last week. The 14-member commission included Kennedy, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Food and Drug Administration head Martin Makary among others. It said processed food, chemicals, stress and overprescription of medications and vaccines may be factors behind chronic illness in American children, citing some 500 research studies, including those that did not exist, as evidence. Digital news outlet NOTUS reported the citation errors on Thursday. It found seven studies listed in the report's footnotes that did not exist, along with broken links and misstated conclusions, raising questions over whether the report had relied on artificial intelligence. Reuters independently confirmed two of the erroneous citations. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters that any citation errors were due to "formatting issues." The government said it posted a corrected version of the report later on Thursday, without providing details on how the mistakes had occurred. "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," the Department of Health and Human Services said. Kennedy has spent decades sowing doubt about the safety of vaccines, which have long been backed by a scientific consensus on their effectiveness for controlling disease outbreaks, raising concerns within the scientific and medical communities over the policies he would pursue as health secretary. Since taking the role, he has fired thousands of workers at federal health agencies and cut billions of dollars from U.S. biomedical research spending. "Nobody has ever accused RFK Jr. of academic rigor," said Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. "The speed (of the MAHA report) suggests that it could not have been vetted carefully and must have been whisked through standard clearance procedures. The citation problem suggests a reliance on AI." AI-generated fictions, known as "hallucinations," have also cropped up in court filings and landed attorneys in hot water ever since ChatGPT and other generative AI programs became widely available more than two years ago. Katherine Keyes, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, was cited in the MAHA report as the author of "Changes in mental health and substance use among U.S. adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic," which the report said was published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics. She said that neither she nor the named co-authors of the paper had written it. "It does make me concerned given that citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science," she said. Psychiatry Professor Robert L. Findling did not author the article cited in the report as "Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern" in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, according to a spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, where Findling is a professor. The studies attributed to Findling and Keyes no longer appeared in the MAHA report on the White House website as of Thursday evening. (Reporting by Renee Hickman; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Cynthia Osterman and Aurora Ellis)