Concerns have emerged regarding the credibility of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) commission report. Investigations suggest possible reliance on artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT, which raises significant doubts about the accuracy of the White House’s findings on declining life expectancy in the United States.
An investigation from NOTUS uncovered numerous errors within the MAHA report. This includes broken links, incorrect issue numbers, and inaccuracies regarding authorship. Some studies referenced were either mischaracterized or didn’t exist at all, with NOTUS identifying at least seven sources that were completely fabricated.
Similarly, a report by The Washington Post revealed that at least 37 of the 522 citations in the document were repeated multiple times. Alarmingly, several URLs contained “oaicite,” a tag associated with outputs from AI links such as those generated by ChatGPT, indicating that AI may have been used in the report’s preparation.
Generative AI tools can sometimes produce inaccurate information, often referred to as “hallucinations.” This phenomenon may explain the array of errors found in the MAHA report, similar to citation problems previously observed in legal documents filed by AI experts and the developers of these models. Despite this, RFK Jr. has been a longtime proponent of the “AI Revolution.” He indicated in a House Committee meeting in May that “we are already using these new technologies to manage health care data more efficiently and securely.”
During a press briefing on Thursday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the citation accuracy issues but notably did not mention the use of any AI tools. She characterized the discrepancies as “formatting issues” and defended the health report, asserting that it is “backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government.”
The Washington Post also reported that the MAHA report file was updated on Thursday to eliminate some of the oaicite markers and substitute several fictitious sources with more credible references. In a statement, Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, noted that “minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic affecting our nation’s children.”
