The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don't Exist

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: NOTUS

HEALTH & SCIENCE

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don't Exist

The Trump administration's "Make America Healthy Again" report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don't exist, according to the listed authors.


Jacquelyn Martin/AP

By Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto
May 29, 2025 05:36 AM

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.

Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed in the MAHA report as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her this week, she was surprised to hear of the citation. She does study mental health and substance use, she said. But she didn't write the paper listed.

"The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with," Keyes told NOTUS via 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."

It's not clear that anyone wrote the study cited in the MAHA report. The citation refers to a study titled, "Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US 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.

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Read more: https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-again-report-citation-errors

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Hat tip, Kevin Kruse and Tim Murphy

Reposted by Kevin M. Kruse
https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmkruse.bsky.social

again all of this stuff is resignation-level for literally everyone involved www.notus.org/health-scien...

— Tim Murphy (@timothypmurphy.bsky.social) 2025-05-29T13:20:10.289Z

Tim Murphy
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again all of this stuff is resignation-level for literally everyone involved www.notus.org/health-scien...

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don't Exist
The Trump administration's "Make America Healthy Again" report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don't exist, according to the listed authors.
www.notus.org
May 29, 2025 at 9:20 AM