Republicans are Inventing Studies to Support their Oppressive Tactics

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Transcript:

Back in March, I talked about a court case in which Trump’s attorneys argued that the administration had the right to discriminate against transgender people by citing research that directly contradicted their own arguments. And that was pretty funny, if you ignore the fact that actual lives are being affected by these numbskulls.

A few months later, things have gotten even funnier, by which I mean horrific! Two weeks ago, human-shaped worm mecha RFK, Jr. proudly published his MAHA report, a “call to action” that explores “American children’s declining health, backed by compelling data and long-term trends,” culled from more than 500 studies. And what did this compelling data show was the problem? Well, everything RFK, Jr. and his cronies hate, of course! Ultra processed foods! Chemicals! Screens! And too much dang healthcare!

It’s incredible that they found 500 studies to support assertions like ADHD medications being overprescribed in children, considering the fact that, well, that’s not true. So, did they take a page from the playbook used by the Trump attorneys who misrepresented studies to support the opposite of what they actually found? No! They just straight made up fake studies that don’t exist.

NOTUS, a news outlet from the the Allbritton Journalism Institute, found that at least seven of the studies cited in the MAHA report do not exist:

“Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic” is cited with a “nonfunctional link to the study’s digital object identifier. While the citation claims that the study appeared in the 12th issue of the 176th edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics, that issue didn’t include a study with that title.” The supposed author told NOTUS she did not write any such paper.

“A section describing the “corporate capture of media” highlights two studies that it says are “broadly illustrative” of how a rise in direct-to-consumer drug advertisements has led to more prescriptions being written for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids.

“The catch? Neither of those studies is anywhere to be found.”

“Direct-to-consumer advertising and the rise in ADHD medication use among children” and Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern” “don’t appear in the table of contents for the journals listed in their citations.” The lead author of one study said he never wrote it. The lead author of the other study doesn’t exist at all.

Moving on, the study “Overprescribing of oral corticosteroids for children with asthma,” used to support the reports assertion that 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed, does not exist and again, the first author said he never wrote it. He told NOTUS that he has conducted similar research but “said that even if the MAHA report cited that study correctly, its conclusions are “clearly an overgeneralization” of the findings.”

Not only did they find that several of these studies don’t exist, they found that others WERE misrepresented just like in the transgender discrimination case:

“In one section about mental health medication, which Kennedy has railed against for years, the report cites a review paper it claims shows that therapy alone is as or more effective than psychiatric medicine. But one of that paper’s statisticians told NOTUS that conclusion doesn’t make sense, given their study didn’t even attempt to measure or compare therapy’s effectiveness as a mental health treatment.

“We did not include psychotherapy in our review. We only compared the effectiveness of (new generation) antidepressants against each other, and against placebo,” Joanne McKenzie, a biostatistics professor at an Australian university, said in an email.”

There were several other similar misrepresentations, amongst “ dozens of citations with more mundane errors like broken links, missing or incorrect authors and wrong issue numbers.”

The New York Times followed up on NOTUS’s report by talking to Dr. Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch, who said the whole thing reeks of generative “AI.” Like, “Hey Grok, write me an entire report supporting my delusions with science. And do it in Jar Jar’s voice, just for fun.”

When asked to explain what was going on, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services dismissed all this as “minor citation and formatting errors” and refused to address the AI question, which I think means “yes, that is exactly what happened.”

Then, USA Today of all places found another screwy citation:

“The MAHA report erroneously said an article on the impact of light from computer monitors was published in the journal Pediatrics when it wasn’t, according to the study’s author Mariana Figueiro, a professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

“The report also cited Figueiro’s research as evidence that electronic devices in children’s bedrooms disrupted sleep onset. However, she said the study was on college students and researchers measured melatonin suppression, not sleep.”

This is, obviously, a giant clusterfuck of a clown show: an official government document that gives official guidance for policies meant to protect children was likely just shat out by ChatGPT with absolutely no fact checking. I actually agree with these lunatics on a few things–I don’t think pharmaceutical companies should be allowed to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers. I DO think we should continue to research how extended screen time might affect children AND adults when it comes to sleep, eye strain, and attention span. And hell, I’ve even made a video all about very real scientific studies that show that ultra-processed foods are linked to poor health outcomes like an increased risk of death and depression. But as with everything in this stupid, shitty administration, the solutions are always things that make everything worse. An administration that actually cared about these things would find the actual research, talk to the people who are studying them, and get their input on solutions.

Instead, because they lump in a few common sense issues with a host of bullshit, they’re forced to undermine all of it by making up data out of whole cloth. Not only does it end up casting doubt on all of these issues, but ultimately the federal government is now aiding the makers of these large language models in their campaign to make the general public doubt EVERYTHING, including and especially scientific research. If the average person can no longer tell what’s real from what’s fake, what is even the point of science? Why strive for more knowledge when everything we’ve learned as a species up to this point is now put into question? Oh, a thousand studies show that vaccines do not and never have caused autism? Well, how do I know that that’s real? How do I know you didn’t just make up that list of citations? Especially when all the journals hide their research behind paywalls, anyway?

And lest you think that the Republicans’ use of chatbots to make up studies that support their bullshit only applies to transgender people and children with ADHD, I’m sad to say that they’re going to use the same playbook to punish women.

Last month, Republican Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to the head of the FDA calling on him to “restore critical safeguards on the use of (the abortion medication) mifepristone” for “(t)he health and safety of American women.” His support for this was “(a)n alarming new study” just published by the by the Ethics and Public Policy Center that found “nearly 11% of women-more than 1 in 10 women-who use mifepristone experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, an emergency room visit, or another serious adverse event within 45 days? This rate is at least 22 times greater than the less than 0.5% adverse event rate reported on the FDA-approved drug label for mifepristone.”

But as investigative reporter Garnet Henderson writes, that “study” was not published in a peer-reviewed journal. It was posted on the website of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is a rightwing think tank on the advisory board for Project 2025 and which is funded and guided by anti abortion theocrats. They inflated the number of complications found after medical abortions by using insurance data from an unnamed source and counting “complications” that happened up to a month and a half after the abortion, which means a lot of incidences that would have nothing to do with the abortion. Henderson further points out that the data also “likely include people who had spontaneous miscarriages and may even include people who were prescribed mifepristone for another reason, or were prescribed mifepristone and didn’t take it.”

The actual science, of course, shows us that medical abortions are safe. How safe? About four times safer than penicillin. Less than 1% of people who take the abortion pills require any follow-up care at all.

But yeah, the US is now a post-science culture. They will make up whatever data they feel they need to support oppressing us. And all I can do for now is point it out when they do.