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.
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