White House Health Report Included Fake Citations - The New York Times


A White House report on children's health, promoted as evidence-based, was found to contain fabricated citations, raising concerns about its credibility and prompting a corrected version.
AI Summary available — skim the key points instantly. Show AI Generated Summary
Show AI Generated Summary

The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues.

But the report, from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.

“It makes me concerned about the rigor of the report, if these really basic citation practices aren’t being followed,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was listed as the author of a paper on mental health and substance use among adolescents. Dr. Keyes has not written any paper by the title the report cited, nor does one seem to exist by any author.

The news outlet NOTUS first reported the presence of false citations, and The New York Times identified additional faulty references. By midafternoon on Thursday, the White House had uploaded a new copy of the report with corrections.

Dr. Ivan Oransky — who teaches medical journalism at New York University and is a co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks retractions of scientific research — said the errors in the report were characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence, which has led to similar issues in legal filings and more.

Dr. Oransky said that while he did not know whether the government had used A.I. in producing the report or the citations, “we’ve seen this particular movie before, and it’s unfortunately much more common in scientific literature than people would like or than really it should be.”

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Was this article displayed correctly? Not happy with what you see?

We located an Open Access version of this article, legally shared by the author or publisher. Open It
Tabs Reminder: Tabs piling up in your browser? Set a reminder for them, close them and get notified at the right time.

Try our Chrome extension today!


Share this article with your
friends and colleagues.
Earn points from views and
referrals who sign up.
Learn more

Facebook

Save articles to reading lists
and access them on any device


Share this article with your
friends and colleagues.
Earn points from views and
referrals who sign up.
Learn more

Facebook

Save articles to reading lists
and access them on any device