United States: Trump-commissioned report on the health of young Americans cites studies that don't exist

This highly anticipated report, titled "Make America Healthy Again," commissioned by Donald Trump and released on May 22 by Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., points to a link between ultra-processed foods, pesticides, and screens, and chronic diseases affecting children. It also casts doubt on vaccines.

However, four scientists, contacted, were cited in the first version of the Maha report for work... which they did not write.

These errors, first reported Thursday by Notus, a media outlet affiliated with the Allbritton Journalism Institute, have created uncertainty surrounding the Maha report, which outlines the agenda of Robert Kennedy Jr. (RFK).

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt blamed them on "formatting issues" during a press briefing Thursday. "This does not undermine the substance of the report," Leavitt assured, expressing confidence in Robert Kennedy Jr. and his team. She insisted that their work was "based on sound science."

Noah Kreski, a researcher at Columbia University and author of a paper on adolescent anxiety and depression during Covid-19, said a quote attributed to him was "not from one of my studies" and, in fact, appeared not to come from any existing study.

This initial citation pointed to a malfunctioning internet link, supposedly redirecting the reader to an article from a respected scientific journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics (JAMA Pediatrics). But Jim Michalski, the organization's press officer, assured that this article was not published in the journal or in the periodicals of the JAMA network.

Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who was also an author of the alleged JAMA study, expressed concern. Although she does research the subject of the ghost article, she said she didn't know where the statistics attributed to her came from.

"I would be happy to send this information to the Maha Commission so that they can correct the report, although I have not yet received information on how to contact them," she said.

The same goes for Harold Farber, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, and Robert Findling, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Finally, an article on treatments for people with attention deficit disorder was not published in the journal Pediatrics in 2008, as claimed in Robert Kennedy Jr.'s study.

"I can confirm that we did not find this title in a search of the site," the American Academy of Pediatrics said.

The Department of Health declined to comment, referring questions to the White House. However, during her briefing at the White House, Karoline Leavitt declined to say how the report was produced and whether artificial intelligence tools were used to write it, referring those questions to the department.

All problematic quotes were subsequently replaced with links to actual sources, although in one case a normally peer-reviewed publication was replaced with a simple New York Times article.

The Democratic Party denounced the report as "riddled with misinformation," saying that Robert Kennedy Jr.'s department "is justifying its policy priorities with studies and sources that do not exist."