MAHA report under attack for alleged fake sources, misinterpretations

A report issued a week ago by the Make America Healthy Again Commission that heavily attacked overmedicalization, poor diet, and vaccine schedules as factors behind childhood diseases is now facing its own scrutiny amid accusations that some citations included in the assessment are made up.

The MAHA report contains references to more than 500 studies and other sources used to back up arguments. However, seven of those sources don’t exist, according to reporting from NOTUS.

One such study dealing with anxiety and adolescents included was published in JAMA Pediatrics listing Katherine Keyes as the first author. NOTUS reached Keyes who told the online publication that she wasn’t involved with that article.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes said. “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.”

NOTUS added that a link to the article in the report is broken and although the citation lists the edition it appeared in, a look at that edition doesn’t show the article in it.

One part of the report discusses “corporate capture of media” and provides citations for two studies it claims provides evidence that direct-to-consumer ads has led to a rise in children’s prescriptions for ADHD and depression.

Those citations lead to table of content pages for editions of their respective journals where those studies don’t exist.

NOTUS also faulted the MAHA report for how it interpreted certain studies. For example, the assessment cites a review paper that claims that therapy alone is as or more effective than drugs. But one of the statisticians who worked on the paper told NOTUS that conclusion is wrong because their research didn’t try to compare therapy’s effectiveness to medications.

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