Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Scientists and health researchers didn’t fully do their homework, often exaggerating or outright fabricating information to advance their predetermined conclusions and agendas.
Donald Trump’s White House is under fire today for doing just that, though I’m guessing you can already spot the irony, which I’ll get to in a moment. “Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping ‘MAHA Report’ appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence,” reports The Washington Post, “resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.”
MSNBC adds, “There’s new evidence that the White House’s ‘The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again’ relied in part on scientific research that doesn’t exist.”
That sounds a lot like the fake, AI-generated summer reading list our Emmy Griffin covered last week. It’s a reminder that AI is only as good as the information put into it, which is why Patriot Post authors research and write our own content.
MAHA stands for Make America Healthy Again, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s director of the Department of Health and Human Services, is leading the charge. MAHA’s laudable goal is to make progress in addressing the health issues that are adversely affecting millions of Americans. Obesity is rampant, along with an increase in diabetes and other weight-related complications. Autism and attention disorders seem to have exploded, as have asthma, allergies, autoimmune disorders, and cancer.
RFK wants to know why, and he wants to reverse the decline.
That was the point of his MAHA Commission’s major report, released last Thursday. Some argue, and not without reason, that the report should now be scrapped entirely. “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion because you can’t believe what’s in it.”
The White House, however, has already been updating the report to correct what an HHS spokesman called “minor citation and formatting errors.” He insisted, “The substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”
At best, I’ve been lukewarm on RFK Jr. since it became obvious last fall that Trump was going to put him in charge of HHS. A lifelong Democrat, RFK has a history of being a blind squirrel who finds a few nuts. Those nuts can be really important, but sometimes he’s just nuts.
I’d also note that every conservative in the country would be outraged if Joe Biden’s administration had fabricated research to bolster a health report.
Oh, wait. We were outraged when that happened.
That’s why it’s utterly preposterous to see the smug rebukes from the Leftmedia.
They spent years defending left-wing quack science about COVID, from Anthony “The Science” Fauci’s transparent flip-flop on masking (saying it was worthless before eventually demanding two masks) to the wholly invented “science” of social distancing. The COVID vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis, but media outlets spent years backing Biden’s mandates and public shaming operation while looking the other way when evidence of the risks was presented early on.
Left-wingers also obsess over abortion, even though it takes a human life in the womb. Just this week, Michelle Obama let the cat out of the bag: “Women’s reproductive health is about our life. It’s about this whole complicated reproductive system that the least of what it does is produce life.” I’d hardly agree that making a baby is the “least” of what a woman’s reproductive system does, but at least Obama admitted it’s life.
Also, in defiance of God-created reality, the Left still insists that its upside-down euphemism of “gender-affirming care” is an untouchable scientific fact rather than a dogmatic sacrament of the genital-obsessed gender cult. To serve as deputy HHS secretary, Biden appointed a dude in a dress — a groomer who advocated child gender mutilation.
When it comes to conversations about health and science, maybe they should stay on the sidelines.
Unfortunately, HHS’s blunder undermines its work. RFK’s HHS also recently released a report concluding that “gender-affirming care” for minors is medical malpractice. Just this week, RFK sent a letter to healthcare providers instructing them on the subject. “Given your ‘obligation to avoid serious harm’ and the findings of the Review, HHS expects you promptly to make the necessary updates to your treatment protocols and training for care for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria to protect them from these harmful interventions.” On social media, HHS added, “Providers should no longer rely on discredited guidelines that promote these dangerous interventions for children and adolescents based on ideology, not evidence.”
That’s absolutely correct, but it’s a harder case to make when another report from the same HHS is exposed for shoddy citations, harming the credibility of the messenger.
Much like with the Signal snafu and other blunders, Trump’s team should be roundly criticized for this foolish and inexcusable own goal. RFK and Co. should have buttoned things up when presenting a report they had to have known would be dissected like a frog in biology class. Instead, they drew generally sound conclusions backed by dubious citations.
I support Trump’s agenda, which is why I’ve had to take on these careless blunders, which don’t help any more than zealous overreach.
A trio of writers at the libertarian Cato Institute are far more critical of the MAHA report than I am, but they offer a solid conclusion: “Good public health policy demands humility, precision, and honesty — especially when the stakes are high. … If we want to build a healthier future for our children, we must resist the temptation of prepackaged conclusions and demand evidence-driven thinking, not ideology in disguise. When the government controls both the research agenda and the health advice, it risks turning scientific inquiry into propaganda and personal health into political theater.”
That’s a bipartisan truth.
