White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed concerns about inconsistencies in a Health and Human Services “MAHA” (Make America Healthy Again) report aimed at addressing childhood illness. Several investigations of the 72-page report revealed that several of the scientific citations reference studies within the report that do not exist.

Leavitt described concerns, such as scientists disputing authorship of cited studies or claiming their research was misrepresented, as merely “formatting issues.”

Despite the criticism, the second draft of the report, released just hours later, continued to misrepresent what the studies found. 

Dr. Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, was among the researchers who discovered their names attached to nonexistent studies in the MAHA report. Keyes was listed as the first author of a paper titled “Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic,” which the report claimed was published in JAMA Pediatrics.

“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.”

Dr. Robert L. Findling, a psychiatry professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, was similarly misattributed as the author of a study on direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth, which also does not exist. Another researcher, Dr. Harold J. Farber, a pediatric lung specialist, was cited for an asthma study he never wrote, and said he had never worked with the other listed authors.

Beyond the completely fabricated studies, investigators found that the report misinterpreted existing research. Dr. Mariana G. Figueiro, whose work on screen time and sleep was cited, told NOTUS that “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”.

“I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed, and the report will be updated,” Leavitt said. “But it does not negate the substance of the report, which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government.”

Leavitt also stated that the administration had “complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS”. When asked whether artificial intelligence was used in creating the report, Leavitt said she could not speak to that and deferred to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Within hours of the NOTUS investigation being published, the White House quietly uploaded an updated version of the MAHA report to its website. The new version replaced all seven of the nonexistent citations—five with completely different references and two with references to real studies written by the same authors who were originally misattributed.

However, the cleanup effort has created new problems. A follow-up investigation by NOTUS found that at least 18 of the original report’s citations have been edited or completely replaced, but some of the new citations continue to misinterpret scientific studies. For example, one study that was swapped out was supposed to support claims about psychotherapy being more effective than medication for children’s mental health, but the new citation’s author, psychologist Pim Cuijpers, told NOTUS that the MAHA report’s interpretation of his work is also incorrect.

The citation controversy comes as Kennedy has announced plans to potentially redirect federal researchers away from publishing in established peer-reviewed journals. Earlier this week, Kennedy said on a podcast: “We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they’re all corrupt”. Ironically, the MAHA report itself cited studies from JAMA 30 times.

The MAHA report was developed in just over three months and aimed to identify four primary drivers of childhood chronic illness: poor diet from ultra-processed foods, environmental chemical exposure, lack of physical activity combined with chronic stress, and overmedicalization. The commission is scheduled to release a “Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy” report in August.