A misguided 'do your own research' line as Kennedy Jr unveils MAHA report

[struggle4progress]

The more Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talks about people doing their own research, the more important it is to explain why he's wrong.

May 23, 2025, 9:54 AM EDT
By Steve Benen

... The Washington Post reported, “Some of the report’s suggestions ... stretched the limits of science, medical experts said. Several sections of the report offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers” ...

The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse wrote a compelling column on this a few weeks ago.

It probably goes without saying, but just in case: Researching a vaccine is substantially more complicated than researching a stroller. You research strollers by typing ‘best strollers’ into Wirecutter and buying whichever one has cupholders. You research a vaccine by getting a PhD in immunology or cellular and molecular biology, acquiring a lab in which you can conduct months or years worth of double-blind clinical trials, publishing your findings in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and then patiently navigating the government and industry regulations that are required to make sure your vaccine is safe and effective ...

RFK Jr. appears to approach these issues with the assumption that the scientific canon is inherently suspect because it’s crafted by those who reject his conspiratorial and unscientific perspective. When he advises Americans to “do their own research,” it’s a recommendation rooted in the idea that people should poke around the internet until they find sites that give them information that seems true — or that they want to be true ...

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/rfk-jr-maha-report-do-your-own-research-rcna208727

[struggle4progress]

1. RFK Jr's surprise target: Your doctor

By Chelsea Cirruzzo

05/23/2025 12:00 PM EDT

From food to pharma, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took on all the suspects he’s long maligned in a report on health threats to kids — along with one unexpected one: Doctors ...

The surprise focus on physicians — softened in the report by calling them “well-intended” — comes after weeks of furious lobbying by the food, pharmaceutical and farming industries who feared being demonized by the review.

Instead, the report adopts an argument popularized by Kennedy and many of his colleagues in President Donald Trump’s health department during the Covid pandemic, that the medical profession is dominated by groupthink and has been swayed by corporate interests. Doctors fear speaking out against conventional guidance, the theory goes, for fear of being ostracized. That, the report says, has curtailed research into the causes of chronic disease ...

The American Medical Association did not respond to requests for comment ...

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/23/rfk-kennedy-report-maha-doctor-disease-00366718

[Skittles]

2. the research has already been done

what people can do is EDUCATE themselves

[Silent Type]

3. Guess we'll find out if doctors and other providers will follow Kennedy's BS, or stand up for what

they should have learned in medical school and life.

[Aristus]

5. See below.

n/t

[Aristus]

4. Any time a patient tells me "I did my own research",

I start trying to see how fast I can get out of the exam room. I don’t need to listen to whatever maggoty horseshit they learned from some sixteen year-old high school dropout with a Tik-Tok channel.

I’m thinking of adopting “I’m the only person in the room with a license to practice medicine” as a response to the Dr. Youtubers who walk through my door.

Fortunately, there aren’t as many as there used to be. The word has gotten out. I do not brook any RFK Jr.-style worm-brained bullshit in my clinic.

[Silent Type]

6. Like that approach to scheduling. In my area, it's 70% rube red. Docs/PAs are only slightly less likely to be rube

s than their patients. And, I’m not discussing politics before a digital rectal exam.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Maddow Blog-The Trump administration's 'MAHA Report' cites nonexistent scientific studies

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.

In case this isn’t obvious: In a healthy political system, if officials released a hyped report on health policy, and the document relied on scientific sources that didn’t exist, those officials would be expected to resign — quickly. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-05-29T17:43:57.657Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-administrations-maha-report-cites-nonexistent-scientific-studies-rcna209732

With this in mind, no one was especially surprised when the White House report started crumbling under scrutiny. The Washington Post reported, “Some of the report’s suggestions ... stretched the limits of science, medical experts said. Several sections of the report offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.”

That was last week. This week, NOTUS advanced these concerns, reporting that the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report “misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report harnesses “gold-standard” science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions. Seven of the cited sources don’t appear to exist at all. ... NOTUS also found serious issues with how the report interpreted some of the existing studies it cites.

For example, the administration’s document listed epidemiologist Katherine Keyes as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents — except she didn’t write it.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”....

I would gladly make note of the defense of the MAHA document from Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services, but at least so far, neither the controversial secretary nor the Cabinet agency he ostensibly leads has commented on these new allegations. HHS did not respond to NOTUS' request for comment on the citation inconsistencies, the outlet reported.

Of course, given Kennedy’s recent track record, there’s no reason to assume he’d be able to answer questions about the document anyway.

To be sure, the traditional norms surrounding American politics have been largely shattered, but in a situation like this one, it’s worth emphasizing that in a normal and healthy political system, if officials released a much-hyped report on public health policy, and scrutiny found that the document relied on scientific sources that didn’t exist, those officials would be expected to resign — quickly.

Bob aka RFK JR does not want people to publish is the Lancet or the New England Journal of Medicine because these publications are peer reviewed and check sources.