Of note: one of the report commission members, McMahon, recently sent a remarkably poorly written letter of complaint to Harvard[1]. I think a reasonable inference to draw in this kind of situation is that the commission's members aren't qualified to write even the scaffolding of this kind of report, much less consume and interpret the scientific content within it. From that, fabrication (whether intentional or induced by an LLM) is a natural outcome.
This was a major issue in Trump's first presidency as well. Nobody knew how to actually do anything. There were also a crazy amount of cabinet positions that were never filled.
The plus side is it means most of what Trump tries to do never goes anywhere and usually dies in the courts.
wat10000 · 21h ago
They're extremely qualified to write this kind of report. They'd be disastrously unqualified if the purpose of the report was to drive informed policy decisions, of course, but that's not what it's about. The purpose is to propagandize to the uninformed and to provide justification for dismantling the government, and they're very well qualified for this.
McMahon's previous claim to fame was co-founder and CEO of WWF/WWE. Her current position is just pro-wrestling kayfabe translated to a new context.
UncleMeat · 21h ago
More examples of flag abuse. AI hallucination showing up in critical documents that produce government policy is extremely relevant for a tech forum. But of course [flagged] within an hour.
howard941 · 14h ago
This is malicious abuse and it's really rampant. The threshold is too low to [flagged]. Flagging needs to cost something, perhaps some karma. If it's important enough to flag it's important enough to bleed some karma to do it.
orwin · 22h ago
Was that report Llm-written? I recently used genAI to find scholar papers in multiple languages about a specific ww2 subjects, and it delivered, but amongst the very real articles/thesis, it invented two papers and an author. As the AI i used was likely trained on Google scholar, this was disappointing.
clbrmbr · 22h ago
Unfortunately o3 is blocked by Google scholar from checking the refs. Would be a big plus for a Google agent if it had fast unfettered access to Scholar!
dfxm12 · 22h ago
Lying & skirting work is the MO for the current US administration. We should just assume anything coming from the white house is fantasy at this point. It would be news when something truthful gets reported.
ourmandave · 21h ago
I'm going to assume this is lying more than laziness.
There's no point in publishing results that don't already confirm their non-scientific based answers.
add-sub-mul-div · 21h ago
Agree, but regardless of partisanship the majority of the population will take shortcuts at their job if that's what gets them home soonest with the least effort. And we're on the cusp of the Shortcut Era.
dfxm12 · 21h ago
I really don't care if, as a random example, whoever is closing the old navy takes a shortcut by not folding every last cardigan. I don't care who they voted for or if they voted at all.
This is not the same thing as misinformation about healthcare spreading from the White House.
wat10000 · 21h ago
The entire point of leadership roles is that they're supposed to be better than the average.
jfengel · 21h ago
“Never in American history has the federal government taken a position on public health like this,” Kennedy wrote.
I'm personally thankful this administration is such a bunch of actual morons. It's hugely damaging, for sure, but it could be so much worse. And they are leaving a long trail of negligent missteps that they can (and I hope will) be held accountable for.
ourmandave · 21h ago
Sadly they're actually Useful Idiots. Smart people can now use said idiots to push their hugely damaging agendas.
sorcerer-mar · 21h ago
This is definitely true but these missteps are also making it harder to push the agendas. E.g. they could have just done extremely fast and mostly bullshit administrative hearings from all the people they've been deporting. Instead, because they're actual morons, they've completely skipped any semblance of due process.
They can revoke visas for countless reasons, instead they've decided to go on TV and brag about doing it for engaging in protected speech.
The list goes on!
queenkjuul · 17h ago
The lack of sham hearings doesn't matter when the person is already out of the country and can't come back
sorcerer-mar · 16h ago
There are a lot of ways in which it absolutely does matter. For example, several more flights out of the country have been prevented.
Let's not do this whole defeatism thing. Their errors are slowing them down, other parties' interventions are slowing them down and preventing and undoing some damage, continuous action and continuously exploiting their errors is good and we should keep doing it.
voidUpdate · 22h ago
I wonder how many of the citations were LLM-generated?
drob518 · 21h ago
Yea, that was my thought. Sounds like a staffer used an LLM to do research and didn’t chase down and verify all the references.
postepowanieadm · 22h ago
It would be easier if they decided to reuse EU food safety standards.
queenkjuul · 17h ago
What are you trying to do, kill the entire US food industry?
What's the actual consequences that the people who produced this report could face?
Seriously. Professional censure? Job loss?
Or a six-figure board position at a right wing think tank?
rco8786 · 22h ago
Try seven figure.
josefritzishere · 21h ago
Most sane folsk didn't read it but RFKs book The Real Anthony Fauci was the same way. It had a huge number of citations but many were dubious, fake or non-existent. The quality of work would not have got past the average CS professor.
empath75 · 21h ago
I think it's important to point this out, but I don't think it matters because the purpose of a report like that isn't to find the truth or even to persuade, because they don't expect the "audience" for this to ever read it, or to care remotely about the contents, but only to provide the existence of such a report as justification for enacting whatever policy they wanted to enact anyway.
The vast majority of people are incapable of understanding a legitimate scientific report, and have zero interest in reading them. They also don't have any basis for distinguishing good science from bad, or understand why people should listen to scientists or doctors anyway.
---
A few relevant quotes -- from the Iraq War:
> The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.
---
From Sartre:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
----
1984:
'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.
Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'
---
So much of reality as it's perceived by people is socially constructed and it's possible to wield political power to shape that socially-agreed-upon reality to an extent, and for a length of time that would be surprising to most people in the "reality-based community."
You can show studies and measurements, etc, etc, etc, and they can go "nuh-uh" for literally years and decades and eventually it will matter to someone when they eventually find the stone that 'kicks back', but not to the people that were lying about it -- they already got what they wanted.
I think now we are in a situation where "being right" isn't good enough. You have to both "be right" and wield power, and right now one side of the argument is out of power and doesn't seem willing to exercise any power that they might actually have.
There comes a time where you have to stop playing word games with them and confront them with whatever political power you can bring to the fight.
sidixbsjsjsb · 18h ago
> I think now we are in a situation where "being right" isn't good enough. You have to both "be right" and wield power, and right now one side of the argument is out of power and doesn't seem willing to exercise any power that they might actually have.
It’s always been this way. “History is written by the victors” is not a new concept. If you ever thought it wasn’t this way you just weren’t aware of who was and who wasn’t in power.
Even your quote above - today, any criticism of Israel in Gaza is labeled antisemitism. Was this term abused in the past like it was today, or is the current abuse something new?
add-sub-mul-div · 22h ago
If this is their "gold-standard" science I'd hate to see the bronze level.
nxobject · 21h ago
Don't worry; RFK just speculated publicly about creating his own journals...
I am absolutely shocked, shocked that LLM slop is being used to provide post-hoc justification for an ideological project
bediger4000 · 20h ago
Pretty common for people to imitate the structure of scientific or official documents without understanding the purpose of things like abstracts, citations, statistics, etc. This kind of imitation bears a strong resemblance to the original "cargo cults" of the 1950s.
I wonder if these fakes and mistakes are cargo cult behavior, or AI slop?
[1]: https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
The plus side is it means most of what Trump tries to do never goes anywhere and usually dies in the courts.
McMahon's previous claim to fame was co-founder and CEO of WWF/WWE. Her current position is just pro-wrestling kayfabe translated to a new context.
There's no point in publishing results that don't already confirm their non-scientific based answers.
This is not the same thing as misinformation about healthcare spreading from the White House.
That much, at least, is accurate.
They can revoke visas for countless reasons, instead they've decided to go on TV and brag about doing it for engaging in protected speech.
The list goes on!
Let's not do this whole defeatism thing. Their errors are slowing them down, other parties' interventions are slowing them down and preventing and undoing some damage, continuous action and continuously exploiting their errors is good and we should keep doing it.
Seriously. Professional censure? Job loss?
Or a six-figure board position at a right wing think tank?
The vast majority of people are incapable of understanding a legitimate scientific report, and have zero interest in reading them. They also don't have any basis for distinguishing good science from bad, or understand why people should listen to scientists or doctors anyway.
---
A few relevant quotes -- from the Iraq War:
> The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.
--- From Sartre:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
----
1984:
'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.
Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'
---
So much of reality as it's perceived by people is socially constructed and it's possible to wield political power to shape that socially-agreed-upon reality to an extent, and for a length of time that would be surprising to most people in the "reality-based community."
You can show studies and measurements, etc, etc, etc, and they can go "nuh-uh" for literally years and decades and eventually it will matter to someone when they eventually find the stone that 'kicks back', but not to the people that were lying about it -- they already got what they wanted.
I think now we are in a situation where "being right" isn't good enough. You have to both "be right" and wield power, and right now one side of the argument is out of power and doesn't seem willing to exercise any power that they might actually have.
There comes a time where you have to stop playing word games with them and confront them with whatever political power you can bring to the fight.
It’s always been this way. “History is written by the victors” is not a new concept. If you ever thought it wasn’t this way you just weren’t aware of who was and who wasn’t in power.
Even your quote above - today, any criticism of Israel in Gaza is labeled antisemitism. Was this term abused in the past like it was today, or is the current abuse something new?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/28/rfk-jr-ban-...
I wonder if these fakes and mistakes are cargo cult behavior, or AI slop?