The White House announced Thursday that it will revise a recently published federal report on children’s health after multiple citations were found to reference nonexistent studies, according to Al Jazeera.
The disclosure has fueled criticism surrounding the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged the citation issues, attributing them to “formatting errors” and pledging that the report would be corrected. However, the controversy is unlikely to ease mounting concerns over the direction of health policy under President Donald Trump’s administration.
The report, released last week by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, has been described by the administration as a “transformative” step in understanding the causes of chronic illness in American children. It cited over 500 studies linking factors such as processed foods, chemicals, stress, and the overuse of medications and vaccines to childhood diseases.
But a review by digital news outlet NOTUS revealed that at least seven of the referenced studies do not exist. The investigation also uncovered broken web links and misattributed or misstated conclusions.
Leavitt defended the report’s overall conclusions, stating:
“These citation issues do not negate the substance of the report, which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports ever released by the federal government.”
However, some researchers named in the report have rejected any connection to it. Noah Kreski, a Columbia University researcher, told AFP that a study credited to him on adolescent mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic was “not one of our studies” and may not exist at all.
Further complicating matters, a citation linked to an article supposedly published in JAMA Pediatrics was found to be broken. A spokesperson for the JAMA Network confirmed that the article “was not published in JAMA Pediatrics or any other journal within the JAMA Network.”
The Democratic National Committee quickly condemned the report, labeling it “rife with misinformation” and accusing Kennedy’s department of using fabricated research to support policy decisions.
Kennedy’s confirmation earlier this year was met with widespread opposition due to his long history of casting doubt on vaccine safety. Since taking office, he has enacted sweeping changes across federal health agencies, including the dismissal of thousands of staff members and deep cuts to biomedical research funding.
In a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services defended the report’s significance despite the errors.
“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.”
