John Mark OckerbloomMay 29, 2025

The White House's "Make America Healthy Again" report cites papers that appear not to exist:

"Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed... as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her... 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."

NOTUS couldn't find the paper in the cited journal, and I've verified the claimed DOI doesn't resolve: https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-again-report-citation-errors

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist

The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.

NOTUS
Show threadJohn Mark Ockerbloom
While I can't say for sure at this point how the report was written, the fabrication of nonexistent papers (as well as the citation of actual papers for claims they don't support) is a common behavior of "AI" large language model-based text generators. (Such applications can be very good at outputting convincing-sounding text, but cannot be considered reliable or scientifically supportable.)
May 29, 2025 at 1:16pmWeb
Show threadMorten Juhl-JohansenMay 29, 2025
@JMarkOckerbloom That is certainly the most generous interpretation, and certainly likely.
So either flawed science by letting a text generator make up a report or, more sinister but also a bit high school-level, flawed science making up sources.
Show threadDasMay 29, 2025
@mjj @JMarkOckerbloom Either ways I don't understand why this fraud (sorry no other word for it) isn't shameful enough to trigger a resignation.
Show threadEric RMay 29, 2025
@SRDas @mjj @JMarkOckerbloom You said it yourself: they're shameless in their pursuit of whatever self-interest they have. This sort of blatant, low-effort result is all it needs to be to justify whatever lies they want to push today. It can be called out, but they still have the means (read: corruption at all levels) to push it forward.
Show threadDusk to Don May 29, 2025

@SRDas @mjj @JMarkOckerbloom

#Trump + friends (and the media) have successfully reduced the political cost and impact of "shame" to nearly zero.

See: SignalGate

Only the most egregious offenses end up impacting politicians, e.g. Matt Gaetz

Show threadKalshannMay 29, 2025

@JMarkOckerbloom
I mean, while that's not what people claim it's fore - that seems to be the purpose of the LLM generators.

This isn't anything new for republicans though, they have had an extensive list of think tanks and faked medical and research groups out there that have churned out fake reports saying exactly what they want for the last 50 years - now they don't even need all those people!

Show threadRejZoRMay 29, 2025
@JMarkOckerbloom They are obsessed with Ai bots, so not really surprising...