A "Make America Healthy Again"(MAHA) report submitted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as representing the "gold-standard” of health science is anything but.
That is the conclusion of a report from NOTUS that noted that among the 500 studies cited, it is "rife with errors," misstated conclusions and points to sources that do not exist.
Case in point, Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto of NOTUS wrote, is a cited study by epidemiologist Katherine Keyes examining anxiety in adolescents.
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The problem is, she didn't write it, telling NOTUS in a email, "The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with. 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.”
According to the report, it is still a mystery who did the study, titled "Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic,” or if it even exists since the link to it is "non-functional."
"The anxiety study wasn’t the only one the report cites that appears to be mysteriously absent from the scientific literature," NOTUS is reporting. "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."
In one case a search for a a report on “Overprescribing of oral corticosteroids for children with asthma” only returns a result pointing to the MAHA report.
Add to that, the author of that cited study, pediatric pulmonologist Harold J. Farber, claimed he he did not write it nor has he ever worked with the co-authors listed.
The report goes on to note, "Spread across the footnotes of the 73-page document, those missing papers are listed alongside dozens of citations with more mundane errors like broken links, missing or incorrect authors and wrong issue numbers."
NOTUS is reporting that HHS spokespeople "did not respond to a request for comment on the report’s citation inconsistencies."
You can read more here.
