Norms Impact
RFK Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ report seems riddled with AI slop
A White House health commission report was quietly edited after investigations found fictitious sources and AI-linked citation markers—testing the norm that federal findings must be evidence-traceable and verifiable.
May 30, 2025
Sources
Summary
The “Make America Healthy Again” commission report issued under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. contained dozens of citation errors, including broken links, misstated studies, and at least seven fictitious sources. The White House and HHS responded by minimizing the problems as “formatting” or “minor citation” issues while updating the file to remove “oaicite” markers and replace some nonexistent references. The practical consequence is that a federal health assessment aimed at explaining declining US life expectancy is now compromised by credibility gaps in its evidentiary foundation.
Reality Check
When the federal government issues a public-health assessment built on citations that don’t exist, we are watching the evidentiary spine of policymaking snap—setting a precedent that lets power launder claims through unverifiable “sources” and still demand our compliance. The conduct described is not clearly criminal on this record; sloppiness, duplication, and even AI-generated citation errors generally do not satisfy the intent elements for federal fraud statutes like 18 U.S.C. § 1001 absent a provable knowing and willful false statement to the government in a defined matter. But it is a severe governance failure: reissuing the file to remove “oaicite” markers and swap in replacement citations while insisting the “substance” is unchanged treats accountability as a formatting exercise, eroding our right to transparent, checkable government reasoning.
Media
Detail
<p>Investigations by NOTUS and The Washington Post identified significant citation problems in the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) commission report associated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. NOTUS reported dozens of errors, including broken links, incorrect issue numbers, and missing or incorrect authors, and found that some studies were misstated to support conclusions or did not exist; it reported at least seven cited sources were fictitious.</p><p>The Washington Post reported that at least 37 of the report’s 522 citations appeared multiple times and that several reference URLs contained “oaicite,” described as a marker OpenAI applies to AI-generated responses, suggesting use of tools like ChatGPT in developing the report. In a Thursday briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized the citation concerns as “formatting issues” and defended the report’s scientific basis without addressing AI tools.</p><p>The Washington Post also reported the report file was updated on Thursday to remove some “oaicite” markers and replace some nonexistent sources. HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon stated that “minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected,” while maintaining the report’s substance remained unchanged.</p>