Within hours of Donald Trump and his White House team unveiling “The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again” two weeks ago, problems emerged. The Washington Post reported, for example, that some of the report’s suggestions “stretched the limits of science,” and offered “misleading representations” of scientific research.
A week later, a devastating report published by NOTUS advanced the underlying story considerably, highlighting the unambiguous fact that the MAHA document “misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.” Soon after, The New York Times identified “additional faulty references” in the report, including instances in which the document’s authors pointed to “fictitious studies.”
It seemed hard to believe this debacle could get worse, but it did. NOTUS reported in a follow-up article that several of the errors from the original report have been edited or removed, but in the process, administration officials have added new errors, including updated citations that “misinterpret scientific studies.” From the article:
One study NOTUS identified as misinterpreted in the original report was intended to support the claim that psychotherapy is more effective for children than medication for treating mental health concerns. That study was swapped out with a new “systematic overview” authored by psychologist Pim Cuijpers, who told NOTUS via email that MAHA’s new citation is also wrong. Cuijpers said his referenced study doesn’t cover psychiatric medications in children at all — the research was focused on adults. The citation is located in a section of the MAHA report titled, “American children are highly medicated — and it’s not working.”
When the White House was pressed last week for some kind of explanation for this fiasco — which appeared to be the result of misusing an AI program — press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed there were “some formatting issues” with the document, a defense that continues to be unintentionally funny but not persuasive.
The broader point is not to simply mock officials’ foibles. As the original NOTUS article noted, “As the Trump administration cuts research funding for federal health agencies and academic institutions and rejects the scientific consensus on issues like vaccines and gender-affirming care, the issues with its much-heralded MAHA report could indicate lessening concern for scientific accuracy at the highest levels of the federal government.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not just a hapless official in an administration that puts too little emphasis on competence; he leads the Department of Health and Human Services. On a day-to-day basis, RFK Jr. routinely makes policy decisions — or at least directs officials to implement decisions made by others — that have a direct impact on Americans’ well-being.
Indeed, The Associated Press reported on Saturday that Americans “are losing a vast array of people and programs dedicated to keeping them healthy.” The AP added that recent cuts imposed by the Trump administration have reduced the nation’s public health system “to a shadow of what it once was, threatening to undermine even routine work at a time when the nation faces the deadliest measles outbreak since at least the 1990s, rising whooping cough cases and the risk that bird flu could spread widely among people.” The AP concluded, “The moves reflect a shift that Americans may not fully realize, away from the very idea of public health.” The more the health secretary and his team suffer humiliations of their own making, the more difficult it becomes to have confidence that these officials have any idea what they’re doing as the nation’s public health system suffers. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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