MAHA Tops the JAMA Charts
For more than a year, a eugenics-based paper has been JAMAPeds’ “Most Viewed”
A paper in JAMA Pediatrics attempting to link fluoride ingestion with reduced IQ by a notoriously untrustworthy environmental health investigator and subsequently embraced by RFK, Jr., and MAHA, ultimately leading to at least two states banning fluoridated drinking water for their citizens, has been dominating the site’s “Most Viewed” chart for more than a year — consistently, uninterruptedly, inexplicably.
Here’s a quick rundown of the problems with the paper — for a more complete dissection, you can read my analysis from last spring:
- John Bucher is the last author, and he’s notorious for a preprint about cell phone radiation and brain cancer, which was debunked with great effort but has since itself been revived by MAHA
- They’ve yet to meet a bogus conspiracy they haven’t liked . . .
- It’s a systematic review, an article type MAHA loves because it supports narrative
- IQ is not a clinical indicator or a vital sign
- It is a dog-whistle eugenics metric with no medical relevance
- Fluoride has been consistently proven safe and effective
- Dental health is important to overall health
- The authors relied on studies from a bogus journal from the 1960s based on research from the 1930s, and admit “many of the studies were classified as having high risk of bias”
- The study was published OA, with the authors paying $6,000 to place what amounts to an ad
When the article was first published, it shot to the top of the JAMA Pediatrics “Most Viewed” chart, a position it has held ever since: