RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

Biden, Trump and the Beltway 

Intel Report Doesn't Prove Biden Laptop 'Disinformation' Washington Examiner
Convicted Democratic Fund-Raiser Had Ties to U.S. Intel Just the News
Soros-Backed DA Cut Plea Deals with Lawyer Donors Washington Free Beacon
Google Files: How Obama Regulators Fumbled Big Tech Politico
Media’s Entire Georgia Narrative Is Fraudulent Molly Hemingway, Federalist 

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series 

China Targets Uighur Expats in the U.S. 
The Spectator
While China has forced perhaps three million of its Uighurs into ‘re-education’ camps, it is also targeting members of the Muslim ethnic group who live abroad.  This article reports that Chinese police are ramping up their calls to Uighurs in the U.S., especially newcomers and the younger generation, and threatening to imprison family members if they don’t agree to spy here. Authorities often worm their way into “private” communication channels, such as the WeChat Chinese messaging app and TikTok, which offer the only the means of connection many have with loved ones inside China. Dissidents are warned to remove any negative talk from social media, on pain of never seeing loved ones again. In a separate article, the Wall Street Journal reports on how China has obstructed the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

At LSU, Rapists and Stalkers Got Slaps on the Wrist 
USA Today
The Louisiana State University administrator in charge of doling out punishments to rapists, stalkers and abusers regularly chose to issue the least harsh sanction, regardless of the severity of the alleged acts, this article reports. In more than half the Title IX cases referred to him for punishment over the past four school years, Jonathan Sanders, an associate dean, imposed sanctions that allowed guilty students to continue their coursework uninterrupted, rather than more severe penalties, such as suspension or expulsion. Several women said he added to their trauma by disciplining the offenders for minor, unrelated infractions or questioning them in ways that cast doubt on stories found to be credible by Title IX investigators. LSU’s interim president said:  “There was not a culture of enforcement and accountability.” 

Wokeness Bleeding Into Scientific Institutions 
Quillette
Scientific organizations are increasingly substituting woke politics for the scientific method, suggesting causation where there is only correlation, this article reports. It cites on a broad number of examples – including a Canadian academic initiative exploring “the reproduction of colonialism in and through physics.” One typical example involves Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, the largest single agency supporting scientific research in the country, who has apologized for “structural racism in biomedical research.” The evidence of racism and anti-blackness in the scientific workforce Collins cited was a 2011 study that found that black investigators had research funding rates 11 percent lower than white researchers. By 2020 the success rate of black investigators had doubled to 24 percent, compared with 31 percent for white investigators. Disparities in outcomes are, however, not themselves evidence of racism within the NIH. There is no evidence that the grant committees adjudicating these applications judged the proposals on anything but merit. 

U.S. Building Boom's Silent Deaths
Atlantic, Economic Hardship Reporting Project
This article reports that the rise of nonunion workers has made construction work especially dangerous in New York City. Last March, when much of the city closed for business because of the pandemic, many construction sites remained open for weeks; the work was deemed essential and laborers were forced to choose between working in close, unsanitary quarters and losing a paycheck. The Queens neighborhoods where many workers live became the epicenter of the city’s initial outbreak. By mid-May, one in 287 residents of Jackson Heights had died from COVID-19. In the fall, as rates of transmission spiked across the U.S., New York City construction sites again became a source of outbreaks. Even setting aside the pandemic, construction workers are dying on the job at alarmingly high rates. Nationwide, 20 percent of all worker fatalities in 2019 occurred on private construction sites. As the number of unionized workers on jobs across New York decreased, the number of injuries shot up. According to an investigation by Crain’s New York Business, reported injuries on New York City construction sites were higher in 2018 than in any other year since the 2008 recession. In its most recent annual report of construction fatalities, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a worker-advocacy group, found that 86 percent of the workers who died on private job sites were nonunion.  

Next Cultural Battle: States vs. Trans Athletes 
Sports Illustrated
At least 26 states have passed or are considering laws that would ban biological boys who identify as girls from playing school sports on women’s and girls’ teams. This article, which is sympathetic to trans athletes, reports that “the science as to whether trans athletes retain a physical advantage over their cisgender competitors is still unsettled. While advocates of these anti-trans bills contend that trans women and girls are inherently bigger and stronger than their cisgender peers, those who oppose the bills counter the advantage is overstated, if it even exists—and, in youth sports, ultimately not that important.” The article acknowledges, but does not explore, four Connecticut runners who sued two trans competitors who won championship races. It does report that exclusion from girl sports can be traumatic for young trans athletes. 

Do Some People Fake Oppression Like Others Fake Illness? 
Atlantic
A handful of people of white people have falsely claimed ethnic heritages in recent years. These include Alec Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria; academics Kelly Kean Sharp and CV Vitolo-Haddad; attorney Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan; activist Satchuel Cole,;and most famously, Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who lived as an African American and now goes by the name Nkechi Amare Diallo. This interesting article spins those few cases into a trend noting that most of the fakers are “women, all educated and professionally successful, all working in fields engaged with questions of oppression and marginalization. And in all of these cases, somewhere along the line, empathy tipped into appropriation. It was not enough to feel the pain of marginalized groups; they had to be part of them, too.”  

Coronavirus Investigations 

The Case Against Lockdowns 
CSPI
This very long, graph-heavy article argues that lockdowns and other stringent restrictions do not have a very large effect on containing the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, because they are a blunt instrument that have a hard time targeting the behaviors that contribute most to transmission. It reports that infection rates ebb and flow as people modify their behavior in response to changes in epidemic conditions such as rising hospitalizations and deaths, which reduces transmission and causes the epidemic to recede long before the herd immunity threshold is reached. This, however, is only temporary and eventually infection rates start growing again because people go back to more regular behavior. The belief that lockdowns are very effective nevertheless persists because authorities react to the same changes in epidemic conditions as the population, so they tend to implement lockdowns and other stringent restrictions around the time when people start modifying their behavior. 

Other Coronavirus Investigations 

Emails: Scientists Scrubbed Possible Lab Origin of Covid Just the News
The Covid Odyssey of One NBA Scout The Ringer