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MAHA Report Found To Contain Citations To Nonexistent Studies 100

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House's sweeping "MAHA Report" appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence [non-paywalled source], resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday. Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post.

Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning. Some references include "oaicite" attached to URLs -- a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of "oaicite" is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company. A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate -- as well as the tendency to "hallucinate" studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.

MAHA Report Found To Contain Citations To Nonexistent Studies More | Reply

MAHA Report Found To Contain Citations To Nonexistent Studies

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  • Like the saying goes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 30, 2025 @12:47PM (#65416849)

    The only qualified person Trump ever hired was Stormy Daniels.

    • Re:Like the saying goes (Score:5, Informative)

      by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @01:09PM (#65416907)

      And he failed to pay her, as per his usual SOP.

      • That's what the whole 34 felonies business is though. Trump paid her through his lawyer. 1 initial payment then 11 more over the course of a year recorded in triplicate. 11x3+1=34 felonies. Paying her off wasn't illegal. They said it would influence the election for the public to know so it was approached from an election tampering angle. It's the reason the case is controversial. Normally that would be persued by the feds, but they declined.

    • And number that includes all "AI agents" that were gifted to his administration by those tax-funded LLM billionaires.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cpurdy ( 4838085 )
      Under-rated comment. This administration is a clown show of destruction, and it's being run by some of the stupidest people to be in government work -- and that's saying a lot.

      Republicans and MAGAs have destroyed 250 years of nation building in 4 months.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        "and that's saying a lot."

        The government gets the problems that business and private enterprise and the American people failed to solve. The buck stops with them because it must stop with them. That's why they have such a difficult time and why people like cannot understand why they simply cannot operate as a business. You wouldn't want them to. Grandma and Grandpa are not outputs or inputs to government, neither is the environment, health and safety, research into medical issues, etc.

        And to make everything

      • Almost like the Republican Party's entire goal since Nixon has been to destroy the United States and terrorize its population.

  • This guy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @12:49PM (#65416855)

    I don't want to seem like I'm being evasive, but I don't think people should be taking medical advice from me

    -- RFK Jr.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/r... [cbsnews.com]

  • You Expected Anything Else? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GlennC ( 96879 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @12:57PM (#65416877)

    This regime is committed to trying to bend reality to match their expectations. They will continue to do so by whatever means are available to them..

    The question now is what can be done about this blatant attack on not only the rule of law but on reality itself.

  • Anti-vax report (Score:3)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @12:58PM (#65416879)
    Was cribbed from chatgpt. Is anyone surprised? Anyone?

    (Crickets)

    This happens to come from the top of our government, but that’s a different story. A sad, pathetic story, but a different topic.
  • This is the kind of thing that the US government would pay reporters to make up, using circular and non-existent citations. Late they revise or redact figures and reports to maintain a shred of credibility. The problem, is that someone's reputation was on the line, but now they can just defer blame to an AI hallucination. The damage is done, you've formed an opinion and a general sense of unease, but you forget what facts and sources you based that opinion or feeling on.

  • Complete transparency! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @01:03PM (#65416891)

    Since RFK jr. promised "complete transparency", I'm sure he wouldn't mind sharing which prompts were used to generate the text. I know this because they definitely weren't asking for a specific outcome or any other type of predefined conclusion oriented report. /s

    RFK jr. is clearly a fraud in every sense. This farce of a report is exactly the type of malfeasance that should land officials in jail.

  • Matches the non-existent brain cells in RJK Jr's skull.

  • We are also probably not going to get (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @01:44PM (#65416973)
    An updated covid shot this year.

    The current shot though is better than nothing. You can and should lie about your immunocompromised status if you are not in the age group they are allowing it. They are not allowed to ask why you are immunocompromised and even if somebody does the list is enormous and includes things like depression.

    Basically just use the same tactics used to get your weed card back in 2005.

    lots and lots of people are going to die. And if we have another pandemic it's going to be terrifying.

    Every single institution designed to protect you has failed or been disassembled. Good luck out there people.

  • For people wondering why they do this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @01:47PM (#65416979)
    And the anti-floride nonsense too it's because the Republican party is objectively terrible for the economy. The big beautiful bill they are working on passing is going to crash the economy. It gives 7 trillion dollars to the 1% on the national credit card while still cutting $800 billion a year in Medicare and Medicaid spending.

    You can tell yourself all you want that those cuts are fine because fuck those people but when 800 billion exits the US economy you are going to be impacted by that.

    So because the Republican party is objectively terrible for the economy and jobs they have to give their voters some reason to vote for them besides their pocketbooks.

    So we get transpanic, anti-vax and anti fluoride nonsense

    These little moral panics are the trade-off you make. You get to indulge in them and feel like you're in control and you have secret information. In exchange for that the entire economy is going to collapse, and you will eventually mortgage your house and lose it to a large corporation.

    Doesn't seem like a good trade-off to me but what the hell do I know?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 )

      Even very liberal people question the use of fluoride these days. In my country, we are pretty liberal and almost all people here hate republicans. The biggest country's city where I live has banned fluoride in drinking water a long time ago since we get enough simply by brushing our teeth so there is no need to ingest some every time we drink a glass of city water which is pretty good by the way. I simply put some city water in an open container in the fridge and let the chlorine evaporate (fluoride don't

      • Not all people who oppose fluoride in water are Republicans, but all people who oppose fluoride in water are stupid.

      • You Feel like you got something from your government when they banned fluoride. I'm literally not going to argue with you on this point you are factually wrong. Especially in places that have poor access to dental care. There's no point to arguing with someone who's is wrong as you are.

        But you are beautifully confident that you got something from your government. They take all your money and you get to Pat yourself on the back because you have secret knowledge and secret studies that nobody else has.

      • Even very liberal people question the use of fluoride these days. In my country, we are pretty liberal and almost all people here hate republicans. The biggest country's city where I live has banned fluoride in drinking water a long time ago

        Name your country and city.

      • Re:For people wondering why they do this (Score:5, Interesting)

        by larwe ( 858929 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @02:44PM (#65417143)

        The biggest country's city where I live has banned fluoride in drinking water a long time ago since we get enough simply by brushing our teeth so there is no need to ingest some every time we drink a glass of city water

        Swing and a miss. The whole way the effects of fluoride were discovered is correlating dental health with local water supplies that had naturally occurring levels of fluoride. You CANNOT obtain the full benefit using topical applications. The fluoride is incorporated into the dentine as it accretes; toothpaste does NOT penetrate deeply into the tooth. Having it in the diet during childhood is key to having strong permanent teeth.

        • Just make fun of them instead. They are either trolls, right wing extremists trying to use conspiracy theories to get power, or scared desperate people trying to make sense of the world in the only way they know how.

          It doesn't matter what group they are you're not going to reach them. Once in a while if they are family and you know them IRL you might get them to tone down the worst of it.

          The reason people want to believe in this nonsense is that the real world is random and chaotic and often just fuc

      • The anti-fluoride and anti-vaxx movements have always been on the Democrat side. Under Trump, those anti-science conspiracies are being embraced by Republicans as well.

        This is, once again, a reminder that Trump and MAGA are not conservative movements. Anti-science positions are not, and were never, solely the domain of one party. They just chose *different* anti-science positions. The Republican who believes that climate change isn't real is applying the same kind of wrongthink as the Democrat who believ

        • Re: For people wondering why they do this (Score:4, Insightful)

          by kqs ( 1038910 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @04:16PM (#65417353)

          Anti-fluoride and anti-vax started in the lunatic left fringe, yes. The difference is that Democrats realize that those bozos are not qualified to be city dog-catchers, much less head of HHS. Note how nobody from the lunatic left is elected to positions of power. Mainstream Republicans took the stupidest ideas from the lunatic left and made them the center point of their platform.

          So no, your "both sides are just as bad" whining is as accurate as RFK Jr. Have you been checked for brain worms lately?

        • You're sort of right about anti-vaxx, though to be clear, it was always a tiny minority. The vast majority of the left are in favor of vaccines. Period. You could also have brought up alternative medicine which also has a minority constantly pushing it within left wing circles.

          However, anti-fluoride has always been the domain of the right-leaning conspiracy movement. It even famously was parodied in Dr Strangelove - General Ripper was no liberal.

          > This is, once again, a reminder that Trump and MAGA are n

  • These are not errors, these are just alternative facts.

  • The citations are NOT the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dark.nebulae ( 3950923 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @02:02PM (#65417027)

    The problem is in the actual content of the report. It too is full of made up crap sourced from unknown origins all to support a questionable policy position by someone with no medical training and generally considered to be on the fringe on most topics.

    The citations only prove that they're making crap up to support their arguments and positions.

    • At the very least, they are being obvious about it. This report was created with no real scientific input. See the citations (that don't exist) for proof.

      A cleverer liar would use actual citations that support their position (there are always some, even if they are low-quality studies or minority opinions).

  • ... but this is absolutely yet another harbringer of how GenAI is already - not "going to" - decaying science and the law. This is obviously a special case where the prompts were manipulated to get a desired outcome, but even the innocuous "I saved time by using GenAI to look up my references" is basically throwing lumps of styrofoam into the concrete on which we build our civilization. Sooner or later the weak spots accumulate and the structure collapses. Perhaps the outcome we should be fearing isn't an a
    • Yeah, well put. Points of view creep into the more or less factual information undermining its value and veracity then you can't even agree on the starting points or axioms. Or worse, often in an argument today, the same facts lead to opposite conclusions. There is no way to argue . It's just points of view, says me. So there is no basis for argument ! Words have lost their meaning at that point.

  • Didn't RFK Jr learn anything from Trump's Big Beautiful Healthcare Finance Bill? All RFK Jr had to do is say he has a report, and then wave around a stack of blank papers. If he'd done that, there would be no bullshit to get called on.

  • "A common hallmark of *POORLY PROMPTED* AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate -- as well as the tendency to "hallucinate" studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real."

    Prompt: Verify all your responses against sources. Value accuracy over agreement and check my questions and stated facts for implied or explicit innaccuracy. Write in a midwestern grammar selection at 11th grade level. Use straightforward language and summ

  • Ridiculous Per Capita Health Expenditure Chart (Score:4, Interesting)

    by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @05:17PM (#65417495)
    The report includes a ridiculous "Health Expenditure Per Capita" and then goes on and assumes this applies to Americans across the board. This large number does not reflect at all what is spent on healthcare by typical Americans and has nothing at all to do with the health of a typical American. For numbers to correlate with health, you have to break them down based on what typical people are actually spending -- not what billionaires are spending on healthcare.

    In 2021 these numbers were reported:
    - Bottom 50 percent: $385 per capita
    - Top 10 percent: $46,367 per capita
    - Top 5 percent $71,067 per capita
    - Top 1 percent $166,980 per capita
    https://meps.ahrq.gov/data_fil... [ahrq.gov]

  • If you want a picture of a dude cutting the head off of a whale with a chainsaw AI is certainly the right tool for the job.

    On the other hand using AI to generate references is about as useful as asking someone whose brain was eaten by a worm about their trip to Samoa.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Most of the newer models aren't so bad at generating references. Whatever they used in this case seems to have gotten most of them right. But you're supposed to actually read your references, in which case you'll catch any bad ones.

      If you don't check then somebody is going to figure out that you didn't actually write the thing, never mind read the references, and you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Then that somebody is going to tell everybody.

  • We had ZERO autism cases when there were pirates roaming the high seas.
    This is what I think when I see a bunch of alarmingly rising graphs showing exposure to chemicals and childhood chronic diseases.
    And if you plot child mortality and life expectancy over the same timeframes, the conclusion is clear: all those chemicals and ultra processed food make people live longer.
    You may laugh, but the whole MAHA report is at this level of scientific insight.

  • I payfor the premium service models, several of them and many are excellent productivity boosters...BUT

    Every so often after sometimes hours of good responses a model would spew some illogical babble quite smoothly like how using a certain scoring method the LLM invented you can achieve 102% score on a test.
    If you have some unconscious biased the LLM may just reinforce it with a logical argument in favour that is plain false but you might not know because you're could genuinely not be even aware you're bi

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