Washington DC - At least four of the studies cited in a flagship White House report on children's health do not exist, authors listed in the document told AFP Thursday, casting doubt on the paper outlining Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s agenda.

The highly anticipated "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) report was released May 22 by the presidential commission tasked with assessing drivers of childhood chronic disease.

But it includes broken citation links and credits authors with papers they say they did not write.

The errors were first reported Thursday by NOTUS, a US digital news website affiliated with the nonprofit Allbritton Journalism Institute.

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Noah Kreski, a Columbia University researcher listed as an author of a paper on adolescent anxiety and depression during the Covid-19 pandemic, told AFP the citation is "not one of our studies" and "doesn't appear to be a study that exists at all."

The citation includes a link that purports to send users to an article in peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA, but which is broken. Jim Michalski of JAMA Network Media Relations said it "was not published in JAMA Pediatrics or in any JAMA Network journal."

AFP also spoke with Harold Farber, pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine, who said the paper attributed to him "does not exist" nor had he ever collaborated with the co-authors credited in the MAHA report.

Similarly, Brian McNeill, spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, confirmed that Professor Robert Findling did not author a paper that the report says he wrote about advertising of psychotropic medications for youth.

A fourth paper on ADHD medication, was also not published in the journal Pediatrics in 2008 as claimed in the MAHA report.

"I can confirm that we didn't find that title in a site search," said Alex Hulvalchick, media relations specialist for the journal's publisher the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment, referring questions on the apparent errors to the White House.

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Kennedy was approved as health secretary earlier this year despite widespread alarm from the medical community over his history of promoting vaccine misinformation and denying scientific facts.

Since taking office, he has ordered the National Institutes of Health to probe the causes of autism – a condition he has long falsely tied to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

The report's chronic disease references appear to nod to that same disproven theory, discredited by numerous studies since the idea first aired in a late 1990s paper based on falsified data.

It also rails against the "over-medicalization" of children, citing surging prescriptions of psychiatric drugs and antibiotics, and blaming "corporate capture" for skewing scientific research.

The White House downplayed questions about the report but quietly edited the document on Thursday.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the mishaps as "formatting issues" during a press briefing.

"It does not negate the substance of the report," said Leavitt, who expressed confidence in Kennedy and his team, and insisted that their work was "backed on good science."

At her briefing, Leavitt declined to answer how the report was produced and whether artificial intelligence tools may have been used to craft it, directing those questions back to HHS.

All of the citations investigated by AFP were replaced with links to real sources in the updated version, though in one case, purported research was supplanted by an article from The New York Times.