RFK Jr, HHs & MAHA | CDC RIF massacre

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“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. …”

——
Did they have AI draft their report and it imagined up studies to support their pre-ordained conclusions that no one bothered to check? Or is this just sloppy human work either by the RFK team or, as MAHA and MAGA frequently argue, remaining deep state HHS employees intentionally sabotaging the report with fake references?

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nycfan said:


“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. …”

——
Did they have AI draft their report and it imagined up studies to support their pre-ordained conclusions that no one bothered to check? Or is this just sloppy human work either by the RFK team or, as MAHA and MAGA frequently argue, remaining deep state HHS employees intentionally sabotaging the report with fake references?

​
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“… The anxiety study wasn’t the only one the report cites that appears to be mysteriously absent from the scientific literature. A section describing the “corporate capture of media” highlights two studies that it says are “broadly illustrative” of how a rise in direct-to-consumer drug advertisements has led to more prescriptions being written for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids.

The catch? Neither of those studies is anywhere to be found. Here are the two citations:

Shah, M. B., et al. (2008). Direct-to-consumer advertising and the rise in ADHD medication use among children. Pediatrics, 122(5), e1055- e1060.

Findling, R. L., et al. (2009). Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 19(5), 487-492.

Those articles don’t appear in the table of contents for the journals listed in their citations. A spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, where psychiatric researcher Robert L. Findling currently teaches, confirmed to NOTUS that he never authored such an article. The author of the first study doesn’t appear to be a real ADHD researcher at all — at least, not one with a Google Scholar profile.

In another section titled, “American Children are on Too Much Medicine – A Recent and Emerging Crisis,” the report claims that 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. But searching Google for the exact title of the paper it cites to back up that figure — “Overprescribing of oral corticosteroids for children with asthma” — leads to only one result: the MAHA report.

The corticosteroids study’s supposed first author, pediatric pulmonologist Harold J. Farber, denied writing it or ever working with the other listed authors. He pointed to similar research he’s conducted, but said that even if the MAHA report cited that study correctly, its conclusions are “clearly an overgeneralization” of the findings.…”
 
“…
nycfan said:
“… The anxiety study wasn’t the only one the report cites that appears to be mysteriously absent from the scientific literature. A section describing the “corporate capture of media” highlights two studies that it says are “broadly illustrative” of how a rise in direct-to-consumer drug advertisements has led to more prescriptions being written for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids.

The catch? Neither of those studies is anywhere to be found. Here are the two citations:

Shah, M. B., et al. (2008). Direct-to-consumer advertising and the rise in ADHD medication use among children. Pediatrics, 122(5), e1055- e1060.

Findling, R. L., et al. (2009). Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 19(5), 487-492.

Those articles don’t appear in the table of contents for the journals listed in their citations. A spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, where psychiatric researcher Robert L. Findling currently teaches, confirmed to NOTUS that he never authored such an article. The author of the first study doesn’t appear to be a real ADHD researcher at all — at least, not one with a Google Scholar profile.

In another section titled, “American Children are on Too Much Medicine – A Recent and Emerging Crisis,” the report claims that 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. But searching Google for the exact title of the paper it cites to back up that figure — “Overprescribing of oral corticosteroids for children with asthma” — leads to only one result: the MAHA report.

The corticosteroids study’s supposed first author, pediatric pulmonologist Harold J. Farber, denied writing it or ever working with the other listed authors. He pointed to similar research he’s conducted, but said that even if the MAHA report cited that study correctly, its conclusions are “clearly an overgeneralization” of the findings.…”
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”…
NOTUS also found serious issues with how the report interpreted some of the existing studies it cites.

In one section about mental health medication, which Kennedy has railed against for years, the report cites a review paper it claims shows that therapy alone is as or more effective than psychiatric medicine. But one of that paper’s statisticians told NOTUS that conclusion doesn’t make sense, given their study didn’t even attempt to measure or compare therapy’s effectiveness as a mental health treatment.

“We did not include psychotherapy in our review. We only compared the effectiveness of (new generation) antidepressants against each other, and against placebo,” Joanne McKenzie, a biostatistics professor at an Australian university, said in an email.

…
Another medical researcher whose work was cited in a section about how screen time affects children’s sleep told us the MAHA report mischaracterized her study.

“The conclusions in the report are not accurate and the journal reference is incorrect. It was not published in Pediatrics. Also, the study was not done in children, but in college students,” Mariana G. Figueiro emailed NOTUS. She added that she even had more relevant research the authors could have used: “I was not aware of the choice, or else I would have suggested one of the other ones.”…”

 
Setting aside whatever anyone thinks of the analysis or conclusions in the MAHA report, it should be pulled to have the slipshod references peer reviewed and corrected before re-issue.

If this kind of “effort” is how they start, I dread to see where they go from here … of course their strangulation of support for the COVID vaccine is an indication of exactly where they are headed.
 
nycfan said:


“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. …”

——
Did they have AI draft their report and it imagined up studies to support their pre-ordained conclusions that no one bothered to check? Or is this just sloppy human work either by the RFK team or, as MAHA and MAGA frequently argue, remaining deep state HHS employees intentionally sabotaging the report with fake references?

​
Click to expand...

It's like the lawyer who submitted an AI generated brief with fake case references, I would guess.
 
nrsair said:
My company is developing a new vaccine, and previously FDA was adamant that it should be compared to the standard of care- either Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccine.
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What was the story with Novavax's vaccine, nrsair? I remember it was being touted as a "better" alternative to the mRNA vaccines even by some quarters of the anti-vax crowd, but then I didn't hear anything else about it. Why did some anti-vaxxers seem at least somewhat OK with Novavax's vaccine? The stock price cratered, I assumed it basically just didn't work...
 
hedge said:
What was the story with Novavax's vaccine, nrsair? I remember it was being touted as a "better" alternative to the mRNA vaccines even by some quarters of the anti-vax crowd, but then I didn't hear anything else about it. Why did some anti-vaxxers seem at least somewhat OK with Novavax's vaccine? The stock price cratered, I assumed it basically just didn't work...
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nrsair will know better than I do, but from what I recall, it's some combination of (1) concerns about myocarditis, (2) the challenges of a small company operating in a world of giants (unlike, say BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer), and (3) bad timing, as theirs came on line right around the time most people stopped getting boosters.
 
Healing said:
We're rapidly (like, faster than I can recall) entering a new era of massive technological disruption; an era we can't anticipate the magnitude of effect.
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On the bright side, it only takes AI seconds to point out errors or outright fabrications in even the longest "report"...
 
nycfan said:


“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. …”

——
Did they have AI draft their report and it imagined up studies to support their pre-ordained conclusions that no one bothered to check? Or is this just sloppy human work either by the RFK team or, as MAHA and MAGA frequently argue, remaining deep state HHS employees intentionally sabotaging the report with fake references?

​
Click to expand...

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


www.usatoday.com

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

Researchers listed in the MAHA report have come forward since its publication saying the articles cited don't exist or were used inaccurately.
www.usatoday.com www.usatoday.com

“… “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 not 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….”
 
hedge said:
What was the story with Novavax's vaccine, nrsair? I remember it was being touted as a "better" alternative to the mRNA vaccines even by some quarters of the anti-vax crowd, but then I didn't hear anything else about it. Why did some anti-vaxxers seem at least somewhat OK with Novavax's vaccine? The stock price cratered, I assumed it basically just didn't work...
Click to expand...

Novavax’s vaccine is a protein subunit vaccine, similar to pertussis vaccines. Since that method is more conventional and has a long track record of safety and efficacy, there was a subset of people who preferred that over the mRNA shots.

The full approval for the vaccine was expected in late March/early April (approval dates are calculated from when the company submits the application, usually 10 months), but that was delayed due to the staffing changes and FDA saying they were still evaluating the data. Typically, endpoints and success criteria are agreed by companies and FDA early on in the process, so that was a big red flag and the reason why the stock tanked.

Earlier in May, it seemed like FDA asked Novavax to run a confirmatory trial to demonstrate efficacy after approval, which is a little unusual but not unheard of.

They did end up receiving full approval recently. However, under the previous emergency use authorization the vaccine was available to everyone 12 years and older. However, the full approval is narrower and aligns with the recommendations for COVID shots published by Makary and Prasad recently: 12-64 with underlying conditions, everyone 65 and older. It’s not clear to me if they still have to run the confirmatory trial:

ir.novavax.com

U.S. FDA Approves BLA for Novavax's COVID-19 Vaccine - May 19, 2025

Nuvaxovid™ is the only recombinant protein-based, non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine available in the U.S. Biologics License Application approval triggers $175 million Sanofi milestone payment, with...
ir.novavax.com ir.novavax.com

This has a bit more information- appears as though COVID vaccines will have to file new applications every time the strain changes, which is a massive burden on both companies and FDA (which I’m sure is the point).


Hopefully that’s not the case for the flu vaccines, or my job is going to suuuuck.
 
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