- HHS updated the MAHA report after citing fictitious studies and incorrectly summarizing real ones.
- The White House attributes the mistakes in the report to 'formatting issues' that have since been addressed.
- Officials didn't answer questions about whether artificial intelligence was used in making the report.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has updated the much-anticipated Make America Healthy Again report on childhood illness that was released last week. The report cited fictitious studies and sometimes incorrectly summarized those that did exist.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the report was being updated to address “formatting issues” that led to the mistakes. She said she could not address questions about whether artificial intelligence was used to write the report.
Some media outlets have suggested that could contribute to the errors.
“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,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard told news organization NOTUS in a statement. “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.”
It was the news organization NOTUS that first found some of the studies underpinning the report were not real. NOTUS reported Thursday that “The Trump administration’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.”
Problems with source material
In its assessment, NOTUS found seven sources that “don’t appear to exist at all,” including one on anxiety in adolescents that epidemiologist Katherine Keyes said she didn’t write, though it is a topic she has researched.
“The citation refers to a study titled, ‘Changes in mental health and substance abuse among U.S. adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic,' along with a nonfunctional link to the study’s digital object identifier. While the citation claims that the study appeared in the 12th issue of the 176th edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics, that issue didn’t include a study with that title," per NOTUS.
Among the questionable citations were two studies that illustrated how direct-to-consumer drug ads lead to more prescriptions for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder medications and antidepressants for children. Those also could not be found and the cited authors and journals disputed their existence.
Per NOTUS, the lead author cited in one study on asthma, pediatric lung specialist Harold J. Farber, said he hadn’t written it or ever worked with the other listed authors. “He pointed to similar research he’d conducted, but said that even if the MAHA report cited that study correctly, its conclusions are ‘clearly an overgeneralization’ of the findings.”
He added by email to NOTUS, “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.”
Another researcher said a study cited on the benefits of psychotherapy compared to medication for mental illness “doesn’t make sense,” as it never looked at psychotherapy, but rather at antidepressants head-to-head and against a placebo.
The report’s key findings
As Deseret News reported last week, the MAHA report, created by the MAHA Commission, had four key findings. It said the childhood health crisis is built on:
- A poor diet caused by ultraprocessed foods.
- Toxic chemicals in the environment.
- Too little physical activity and too much chronic stress.
- Over-medicalization, including overuse of prescription drugs.
According to the report, 40% of the nation’s approximately 73 million children under age 18 have one or more chronic medical conditions, while 1 in 5 over age 6 are obese. The report notes that three-fourths of those ages 17-24 are not eligible for military service, largely because they are obese, not physically fit and/or have mental health challenges.
The Associated Press reported that the MAHA report “had already been stoking concerns among Trump loyalists, including farmers who criticized how the report characterized the chemicals sprayed on U.S. crops.”