White House scrambles to correct error strewn MAHA report

The US government has hastened to correct multiple citations in its first Make Our Children Healthy Again assessment,1 which pointed to non-existent studies or dead internet links. New errors have crept in during the correction process, and several authors whose studies are named accurately in the report argue that their research does not support its conclusions.

Within hours of a 29 May report by the US news outlet NOTUS listing seven papers cited in the report that did not exist, the White House began replacing those citations with other studies.2 Initially it tracked and noted those changes in the report, following normal practice in scientific publishing. But as other errors have emerged—the New York Times found two more non-existent papers, and the Washington Post identified 21 dead links—the administration has stopped recording its changes while continuing to make them.

Officials have also scrubbed the tag “oaicite” that appeared in many citation …