A new health policy report released by the Trump administration has drawn sharp criticism from scientists, public health experts, and journalists for relying on fabricated citations—many of them generated by artificial intelligence—and selectively presenting information to support a deregulatory, individualistic approach to American health. The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report, authored under the direction of U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was released on May 22 and immediately raised alarm for its lack of credible sourcing and the presence of non-existent studies.
According to The Washington Post, many of the report’s citations included the tag “oaicite” in their URLs, a marker associated with content generated using OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT. These citations were not only unverifiable but in many cases entirely fabricated. The New York Times and digital outlet NOTUS also confirmed the presence of non-existent studies and quotes falsely attributed to real academics.
The issue was first identified by NOTUS, which reported that seven of the sources used in the original version of the document did not exist. After publication, the administration uploaded a revised version on May 29 that replaced some of the fabricated citations—but stopped short of acknowledging the broader failure of the report’s methodology.
Guohua Li, a Columbia University professor, was listed as the co-author of a study on the mental health of children during the COVID-19 pandemic. He told Agence France-Presse (AFP), “The reference was totally fabricated.” His supposed co-author, Columbia researcher Noah Kreski, also denied any involvement, telling AFP, “It doesn’t appear to be a study that exists at all.” Another epidemiologist, Katherine Keyes, expressed concern to Reuters: “It does make me concerned given that citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science.”
In one example, a study about the advertising of psychotropic medications for youth cited by the MAHA report listed an author and institution that both denied any connection to the work. The university that employs the named author confirmed to AFP and Reuters that no such study existed. “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,” said Georges C. Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, in a statement to The Washington Post. “It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion, because you can’t believe what’s in it.”
The White House attempted to downplay the controversy. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attributed the flawed citations to “formatting issues,” adding that these “do not negate the substance of the report.” However, experts have pushed back on that characterization, emphasizing that the document’s credibility is deeply compromised. Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks withdrawn scientific studies, told The New York Times: “Scientific publishing is supposed to be about verification. There’s supposed to be a set of eyes, actually several sets of eyes. And so what that tells us is that there was no good set of eyes on this.”
The report’s embrace of AI-generated content is particularly concerning given the known risks of so-called “hallucinations,” a term used to describe when AI tools fabricate information that appears plausible but is factually incorrect. “The problem with current AI is that it’s not trustworthy, so it’s just based on statistical associations and dependencies,” said Steven Piantadosi, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. “It has no notion of ground truth, no notion of … a rigorous logical or statistical argument. It has no notions of evidence and how strongly to weigh one kind of evidence versus another.”
RFK Jr., who has a history of promoting debunked claims linking vaccines to autism, was sworn in as U.S. Health Secretary in February. Since then, he has overseen large-scale layoffs in the Department of Health and Human Services and announced plans to introduce placebo trials for all new vaccines. These actions are consistent with the broader Trump administration approach to health policy, which has increasingly shifted responsibility away from institutions and onto individuals.
The MAHA report reflects this philosophy. It attributes America’s chronic illness crisis to factors like diet, environmental toxins, stress, and “overmedicalisation,” while downplaying or omitting systemic contributors such as the lack of universal health care, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of gun violence—currently the leading cause of death among children in the United States.
In one section, the report praises the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) for its “proven track record of improving children’s health.” Yet this acknowledgment stands in sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s proposed reconciliation bill, which includes deep cuts to social programs that would reduce enrollment and benefits for WIC recipients.
The Democratic National Committee accused Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services of “justifying its policy priorities with sources that do not exist” and using citations that “are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions.”
The contradiction between the report’s content and the administration’s broader agenda is also evident in RFK Jr.’s recent proposal to bar government-funded scientists from publishing in mainstream medical journals. Ironically, many of the studies cited—both real and fabricated—in the MAHA report originate from those same journals.
By omitting key public health crises and relying on non-existent research, the Make America Healthy Again report not only misrepresents the causes of chronic illness in children but also advances a political narrative unsupported by science. For many experts, the report raises deeper concerns about the use of AI in policymaking and the erosion of trust in government institutions tasked with safeguarding public health.
As Piantadosi noted, AI has “no notions of evidence,” yet it was used to help shape a policy framework affecting millions of Americans. With its reliance on hallucinated citations, misleading claims, and selective framing, the MAHA report signals a troubling new chapter in the politicization of health research and the dangers of allowing artificial intelligence to supplant scientific rigor.
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