MAHA Criticism, AI, Tobacco Scientists, Armchair Quarterbacks, FCC, Smart Meters; & August 12's Opportunity
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
Various media outlets have been reporting short-comings of the Trump administration’s 100-day “Make America Healthy Again” report.
If MAHA fumbled, how do we get back on our feet?
Answer: Start blocking and running.
Three emerging narratives regarding the MAHA Report
The first group includes outright opposition to the report from industry interests, from consumers holding beliefs under fire about product safety, and from weaponized political polarization.
In the second group, various interests are reporting that MAHA didn’t go far enough, for example, those opposed to glyphosate use, and those working for increased safety for the Wild West EMF/RF/5G/AI/Space/Big Tech arena.
In the third group, the content itself is being criticized, including the assumption that AI was employed to generate the report.
I am focusing on commentary about the third group.
Futurism: The AI Slop Scandal Around the MAHA Report Is Getting Worse
For example, on May 30, Futurism reported, The AI Slop Scandal Around the MAHA Report Is Getting Worse
The AI Slop Scandal Around the MAHA Report Is Getting Worse "It should be junked at this point."It came to light this week that a new government report from the "Make America Healthy Again" Commission led by Robert F Kennedy Jr. contained botched citations for scientific papers that didn't exist. This is almost certainly a sign that some form of generative AI was involved to draft a very consequential piece of medical agenda-setting, coming out of the US's top health agency, the Department of Health and Human Services. [] Now, some additional reporting suggests that the paper's flaws go even deeper — yes, even deeper than allegedly relying on a technology known for making stuff up and then being surprised that it made stuff up. But first, let's highlight how the White House finally decided to respond to the criticism of the report, which has been "very poorly and not convincingly at all." [] As NOTUS first reported on Thursday, several of the studies cited in the report do not exist at all, including one called "Overprescribing of Oral Corticosteroids for Children With Asthma," which was used to argue that doctors are giving kids too much medicine. This "study" has never been referenced anywhere outside the MAHA report. Lawyers have been sanctioned for similar behavior in court. It gets dumber. The Washington Post found that 37 of the paper's 522 footnotes are inexplicably repeated multiple times. Some of the citations also include an "oaicite" appended to the URLs, which refers to OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. This is a "definitive sign" that the research was gathered using an AI, WaPo concluded. []As experts told the NYT, some of the papers that were correctly cited were still inaccurately summarized — if in fact they weren't being deliberately misconstrued. The report argued, in one case, that a 40-fold increase in bipolar disorder and ADHD diagnoses in children between 1994 to 2003 was propelled by loosened criteria in a fifth edition of a guide used by psychiatrists, per the NYT. But that fifth edition, it turns out, didn't come out until 2013. And that "40-fold increase" the report touted appears to come from a 2007 study which makes zero mention of an uptick in ADHD. "This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point," Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told WaPo. "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."
Notus: The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist
The Futurism headline is based on investigative reporting by the media outlet Notus.
The May 29 Notus headline reads: The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.
Notus wrote: “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.
Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed in the MAHA report as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her this week, she was surprised to hear of the citation. She does study mental health and substance use, she said. But she didn’t write the paper listed. “The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS via email. “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.” It’s not clear that anyone wrote the study cited in the MAHA report. The citation refers to a study titled, “Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic,” along 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.
As the Trump administration cuts research funding for federal health agencies and academic institutions and rejects the scientific consensus on issues like vaccines and gender-affirming care, the issues with its much-heralded MAHA report could indicate lessening concern for scientific accuracy at the highest levels of the federal government.
UPDATE: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard later acknowledged some of the citation inconsistencies but dismissed them as formatting issues. “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 afflicting our nation’s children,” Hilliard told NOTUS in a statement. “Under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, our federal government is no longer ignoring this crisis, and it’s time for the media to also focus on what matters.”
The administration updated the MAHA report to remove the seven references to reports that do not exist.
Notus also reported: More on the MAHA Report
• The MAHA Report Cites a Paper Criticized as ‘Junk Science’ on Pesticides
• The MAHA Report Has Been Updated to Replace Citations That Didn’t Exist
• Democrats Say MAHA Report Inconsistencies Show Kennedy Isn’t Fit to Lead HHS
• The White House Blames ‘Formatting Issues’ for the MAHA Report’s Citation Problems
On May 30, Notus reported, The MAHA Report Has Been Updated With Fresh Errors One psychologist who is newly cited in the report said the updated reference misconstrues his research. The Trump administration’s clean up of the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission’s hallmark and error-riddled report is opening new questions about how the report’s authors drew some of its sweeping conclusions about the state of Americans’ health. At least 18 of the original report’s citations have been edited or completely swapped out for new references since NOTUS first revealed the errors Thursday morning. While some of the original report’s inconsistencies have been changed, a few of the new updated citations continue to misinterpret scientific studies.
Checking the Source of Funding for the Source?
When I see headlines from an unfamiliar source that lead me to believe that an outlet leans either heavily Democrat or heavily Republican or more (when headlines invoke scorn and disgust) I look it up.
I was not surprised to see “There’s something else that’s unique about NOTUS: It’s produced by a newsroom like no other. We’re a product of the Allbritton Journalism Institute, a new journalism education organization founded by Robert Allbritton, the former publisher of POLITICO. At AJI, we’re training the next generation of great journalists by pairing some of the country’s most promising up-and-coming reporters – individuals from different regions, different backgrounds, and different beliefs – with some of the most accomplished journalists working in Washington today. Together, we cover government and politics with the fresh eyes of newcomers and the expertise of veterans. We’ll call it like we see it, no matter whose narrative it fits or how many clicks it will get.”
I like reading the clever work of the writers at Futurism, and I look every day to see who has sponsored the news from Axios. I am not making a value judgement on Politico or Novus vs. Fox News but stating that it is important to know which team they are on, because these are the times we live in and it impacts what and how they cover what they report, no matter what your orientation.
Do any of the authors quoted to discredit the report have a horse in this race?
Did the writers of the articles cover any positive implications of the report?
Foresight, Insight, Hindsight, or No Sight at All?
It is unfortunate that those involved in creating the MAHA report did not have a system of checks and balances in place to ensure that their work was impeccable (for example, the security industry employs hackers).
From the outside-looking-in, employees may have made the poor decision to utilize unmonitored AI, and got exactly what we paid for, which was misleading and inaccurate results.
So, how much is your state, your health care system, your school, your nation, your favorite company paying to race to embrace AI, as they attack MAHA?
Governor Healey Announces Massachusetts AI Hub to Make State Global Leader in Applied AI Innovation | Mass.gov
It appears that there were issues with the MAHA report
On the one hand, it is helpful that corrections have been made, but it would be more helpful if full transparency over what transpired could help inform future decision making, now, because data centers are being constructed across the county to support AI, enabled by nuclear, and grotesque energy and water consumption, and AI is being used and integrated into nearly every aspect of our lives, including government.
This is occurring devoid of any realization that AI cannot access real world experience not recorded on the internet, and that he who controls the data controls the narrative.
If the use of AI can be ridiculed in the MAHA report, it can be questioned more widely.
Which brings me to the point on my musings.
I am grateful on the one hand for deep dive that Notus took to examine the MAHA report, because it will, ultimately, contribute to the quest for better outcomes.
But the problem is that these outlets that have jumped on the bandwagon of dumping on the MAHA report are nowhere to be found in terms of investigating the corrupted tobacco science behind on-going sustainability slop that preceded AI slop, and that slop came from industries employed in lying; product defense firms that morphed into offense, for example on behalf of utilities and so-called sustainability which is doubling as surveillance. And, we pay for that slop, and pay the salaries of the decision-makers who ignore it.
The Utility Scam is Smart Meters
National Grid’s home page cautions: Beware of utility scams.
Smart meters are a greenwashed scam, for many reasons (safety, security, privacy, costs, hacking, planned obsolescence, pollution of the grid, fires, health)
As an example, we have been covering the work of Vince Welage in Ohio proving the cost disparity faced by low usage ratepayers who are financing the ability of high consumption (high income) customer (central air, swimming pool pump, EV charger) to respond to time-on-use and critical peak period billing scheme. Here is his most recent report:
Vince’s updated study: https://safetechinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Duke_Study_Handout_May15_2025-4-pages-3.pdf
As previously reported, Germany has made the policy decision not to install a transmitting meter on the homes of low usage consumers.
This policy decision in the United States would conserve resources and create cost savings for consumers for meter deployments in every state.
But smart meters double as surveillance apparatus; therefore, this option is being ignored in countries less sensitized to state abuses of power.
In addition, despite foresight, the grid has not been hardened to withstand a weaponized EMP/electromagnetic pulse or solar flare. which is where the smart grid money could have been spent.
Marketing and Propaganda and Corruption of Health and Safety
Regarding health, electricity consumers in Massachusetts are being told:
Given that this unexamined ‘slop’ is still being used to justify fees associated with access to essential services including heat and water, why have the investigative outlets not been willing to fact check this type of information or its source?
The Science Behind FL Power and Light Smart Meters: “In my opinion, people should not be concerned about the health impacts or health concerns of smart meters because it’s a technology that is very well understood.” Did the author have 30 years of experience at the Harvard School of Public Health or not? What kind of Environmental Consulting Firm is Gradient?
Why have investigative journalists ignored that fact that National Grid, utilities, and the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative and FCC cannot prove the math and do not provide a source for the 375 years claim? or provide any safety research about the specific effects of smart meters? Or that no one has not investigated direct, real-world reports of harm, and cannot provide any data of reported damages caused by smart meters?
The Cost of Protecting One’s Health vs. What the Market Will Bear
In addition to noting the unfair billing practices that penalize low usage consumers, Vince Welage and others have pointed out correctly that consumers who require an opt out of a smart meter (to protect their health or for whatever reason) are paying for the infrastructure that is of no benefit to them, in addition to the fees for opting out … and this applies to water, gas, electric, and propane, creating an unreasonable, heavy financial burden for many.
This varies by locale. In part, the parameters are defined by how punitive the utilities, ‘regulators/revolving door’ and politicians financed by utilities feel that they can be, while maximizing profits for investor-owned utilities in many cases.
New York
Meter Safety | National Grid
MA Electric
MA Gas:
MAHA vs The Big Beautiful Bill, Why EMF/RF Matters
MAHA “Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism”
“Congress now seems gung-ho to reauthorize FCC spectrum auctions as a way to meet budget goals.” “According to Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY), the sale of this spectrum could raise $88 billion by 2034. This funding would go to the U.S. Treasury.”
For those willing to look at the health data concerning EMF/RF/5G/Dirty Electricity, it is not possible to protect health while balancing the budget through the sale of additional spectrum. Most Democrats are unaware that nature, wildlife, and health are not even protected now due to regulations crafted during Democratic presidential terms, long before Republicans started talking about blocking state’s AI regulations.
There has been very little coverage in the mainstream/politically divided press about the fact that the budget is to be balanced with more wireless.
Getting Involved: What Can You Do Before August 12
Kennedy called the 73-page “Making Our Children Healthy Again” the “diagnosis,” and the “prescription” will follow in 100 days (on or before August 12). According to the report, the federal government will launch “a coordinated transformation of our food, health, and scientific systems” based on its findings.
It’s time to decide what each and every person can do to make sure that the public sentiment towards safer technology choices has a voice.
1. Support the work of the National Call: Sign on to their submissions.
The National Call submits testimony for local, state, and federal proceedings.
Resources – The National Call for Safe Technology
COMMENTS OF WIRED BROADBAND, INC. ON DEREGULATION ON BEHALF OF AMERICANS INJURED AND DISABLED FROM ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION April 11, 2025
REPLY COMMENTS OF WIRED BROADBAND, INC. ON DEREGULATION ON BEHALF OF AMERICANS INJURED AND DISABLED FROM ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION April 28, 2025
COMMENTS OF WIRED BROADBAND, INC. ON BEHALF OF AMERICANS INJURED AND DISABLED FROM ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION (ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION SYNDROME – EMR-S) April 30, 2025
REPLY COMMENTS OF WIRED BROADBAND, INC. ON BEHALF OF AMERICANS INJURED AND DISABLED FROM ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION (ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION SYNDROME – EMR-S) May 15, 2025
FCC-Delete-Submission-4-11-25-FINAL.pdf
A testimony signed by 6000 or 60,000 rather than 60 will carry much more weight. Your support is needed, now. Please repost links widely, and draw attention to the large number of documents created by the National Call. Be counted.
2. Environmental Health News
Returning to the issue of the MAHA report, it is difficult to sugar-coat that it was compromised. Environmental Health News reported, White House quietly updates MAHA report that included non-existent study citations After a watchdog investigation revealed fake citations in the “Make America Healthy Again” report, the White House updated the report without admitting fault. Margaret Manto reports for NOTUS.
In short:
At least seven citations in the original “MAHA” report were found to be nonexistent, prompting a stealth update from the White House.
The revised version swapped out fake references for real ones, though it’s unclear if the replacements support the report’s claims.
Despite these corrections, the White House and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continue to defend the report’s scientific integrity.
Key quote: “Minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same.”
— Emily Hilliard, Health and Human Services spokesperson
Why this matters: It's worth noting that the revelations about the MAHA report's erroneous and non-existent citations comes just days after Kennedy said says federal scientists may be banned from publishing in the world’s most respected medical journals, calling them "corrupt" and planning to replace them with government-run alternatives.
Health policy decisions are only as strong as the science behind them. When official reports include fake or erroneous citations — even if later corrected — it undermines public trust, especially in an era of rampant misinformation and rising chronic disease in kids. Public health is already under siege from misinformation and a legacy of broken promises, and swapping out footnotes without accountability furthers distrust.
EHN has created a dedicated email list the EMF news: https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/150
Please let the organization know that this topic is important by signing up and supporting respectfully toned, thoughtful reporting.
Note: EHN Curators Articles curated and summarized by the Environmental Health News' curation team. Some AI-based tools helped produce this text, with human oversight, fact checking and editing.
Following an Example of Success: Collaborative Review Documents: John Haidt, After Babel
At his substack After Babel John Haidt, (author of The Anxious Generation: How The Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness) wrote about his work establishing collaborative review documents:
Some of the main things we’ll be sharing are a series of collaborative review documents I’m creating with Zach. These are large Google docs where we organize the abstracts of all the published research articles we can find on the major empirical questions I'm trying to answer as I write the two books. The first two docs, which were posted in 2019, and which Zach and I curate with Jean Twenge (author of iGen, and Generations), are:
Adolescent mood disorders since 2010: A collaborative review. This document lays out the basic findings and graphs about how teen mental health has changed since 2010.
Social Media and Mental Health: A Collaborative Review. This document lays out all the research linking social media to the large increases in mood disorders, self-harm, and suicide shown in the first document. We seek out evidence on both sides.
In 2021 I worked with sociologist Chris Bail (author of Breaking the Social Media Prism) to produce an analogous document for the democracy question, titled:
Social Media and Political Dysfunction: A Collaborative Review. This document organizes the empirical evidence on seven pathways by which social media may be weakening liberal democracy.
We have a number of other review docs on various pieces of the puzzle, including documents on play research, what’s happening to boys, video games, dating apps, and international trends.
John is widely credited with the movement towards a smartphone-free childhood.
Recent Research on Wireless Radiation and Electromagnetic Fields
Joel Moskowitz has been circulating abstracts of newly-published scientific papers on radio frequency and other non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF) monthly since 2016. The complete collection contains more than 2000 abstracts with links to these papers. Several hundred EMF scientists around the world receive these updates.
To download Volume 3 which contains abstracts of papers published since 2024 (including the new papers listed below) click on the following link (331 page pdf): https://bit.ly/EMFstudies-May2025
To download Volume 2 which contains abstracts of papers published from 2021 through 2023 click on the following link (867 page pdf): https://bit.ly/EMFStudies-2021-2023
To download Volume 1 which contains abstracts of papers published from 2016 through 2020 click on the following link (875 page pdf): https://bit.ly/EMFStudies-2016-2020
Collaboration to Address Incomplete Paradigm Shifts, with Those Capable of Reasoned-Decision Making with the Ability to Pivot
There are many incomplete paradigm shifts unfolding, for example, the movement to provide a dumb phone instead of a smart phone, only focusing on social media and ignoring electrical pollution. A recent post by the local organic farming group noted that smart watches are an example of how wireless tech helps farmers.
In California, Sarah Aminoff has reported that “Steven Halpern, grammy award winning musician has lost in his effort to stop a cell tower in Marin County that will placed be on a school, where neighbors believe that it will increase safety. The librarians in N. Berkeley want their loved ones to be able call them on their cell phones in the case of an emergency, inviting a cell tower.”
These fear-induced beliefs about safety are the emergency.
These groups will only hear the other side of the story from the individual efforts of people like you.
Last Week, the Ball Changed Hands Again: Phoenix Center Bombshell – 5G Had 'No Measurable Economic Impact'
The quarterback may have fumbled, but the ball is still in the air.
As reported by Broadband Breakfast on May 29, The Phoenix Center yesterday released a paper with a startling conclusion: Wireless 5G has been a bust. Say what? “Despite the industry’s sweeping promises, the data show no measurable economic impact from 5G so far,” said Phoenix Center Chief Economist Dr. George S. Ford, the study’s author. “All regression coefficients are small and statistically indistinguishable from zero across every economic outcome measured – employment, wages, business establishments, personal income, and GDP.”
Ford’s paper comes just days after the House passed a massive budget bill that projects to raise $88 billion from the FCC auction of 600 megahertz of spectrum for 5G and higher wireless services over the next 10 years. In the Senate, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has sponsored legislation calling for 5G spectrum auctions substantially larger than what’s in the House bill. And FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has been vocal about the vast economic and political benefits that accrue from investing in 5G by dint of spectrum auctions.”
“When you are knee deep in manure, shovel.”
The Truth???? The telecom industry and smart meters proponents and their tobacco scientists are buried up to their necks.
Don’t mis-calculate the power of this moment, despite previous losses.
Too small of a team is now doing the heavy lifting on the wireless safety issues. Starting now, however you can help, in whatever ways you can, help bridge the divide and cognitive dissonance that has enabled so much damage. Everything depends on it.