RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

October 5 to October 11

Featured Investigation:

Paper Chase: A Global Industry

Fuels Scientific Fraud in the U.S.

Vince Bielski reports for RealClearInvestigations that a global industry of academic fraud is spreading rapidly from Asia and Eastern Europe into the United States and Western Europe. Sophisticated “paper mills” now produce and sell fake scientific papers and authorships to researchers eager to advance their careers, threatening the integrity of legitimate research.

• Paper mills such as Peer Publicon in India and International Publisher in Russia sell prewritten or fabricated papers and authorship slots, often for thousands of dollars. They promise publication in respected journals, sometimes employing real scientists, falsifying data, and bribing editors to secure acceptance.
• Major publishers have been infiltrated. Wiley’s subsidiary Hindawi retracted over 8,000 papers in 2023 after uncovering widespread manipulation. Some mills created fake peer reviewers and guest editors to approve fraudulent research, while others paid bribes to push papers into high-impact journals.
• The scale of the problem is accelerating. A 2024 study found that suspected paper mill articles have been doubling every 18 months. Once a mill succeeds in placing a fake article in a journal, up to 46% of subsequent submissions may come from mills. Artificial intelligence now enables them to generate convincing papers faster than ever.
• U.S. and European researchers are increasingly implicated. More than 140 retracted papers have named U.S. co-authors and nearly 200 have included co-authors from Western Europe. Some may have purchased authorship slots; others appear to be victims of “name theft,” with paper mills using prominent scholars’ identities without permission to lend credibility to fraudulent work.
• Paper mills openly advertise online, charging from $100 for minor authorships to $8,500 for top billing in elite journals. They mimic legitimate editing services, offering complete “publication packages” that include writing, data fabrication, and peer review manipulation.
• The growing infiltration poses a deep threat to science. Experts warn that false studies mislead researchers, waste funding, and distort entire fields. Despite AI detection tools and new safeguards, major publishers and universities remain slow to act, allowing what one scientist calls a “fancy piece of rubbish” industry to flourish.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Corrections Earn Overtime, Vacation in One Day, RCI

Public Pay for UMass’ Antisemitic Professors, RCI

Federal Employees Lied To “Work” Multiple Jobs, RCI

Throwback Thursday: Grant Goes to Guppy Video Game, RCI

Why Schumer Thinks Dems Have Shutdown Momentum, Punchbowl News

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

How Trump Willed 'Phase One' of Peace Deal Across Finish Line, CNN

How Jared Kushner Helped Broker Gaza Peace, New York Times

Special Counsel Jack Smith Spied on GOP Senators, Fox News

Biden Asked CIA to Bury Report on His 2015 Ukraine Visit, National Review

Dem AG Candidate May Have Run Afoul of Law, Restoration News

One Biden Green Program Gets New Life Under Trump, Politico

Trump Admin Prioritizing Immigration Over Crime Fighting, Marshall Project

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Israel Assisting Palestinian Militias to Topple Hamas 

Los Angeles Times

While the world will have to wait and see if the ceasefire agreed to this week by Israel and Hamas leads to enduring peace, this article, published that deal was announced, suggests there are other key actors not bound by the agreement. It reports that as Israel sought to excise Hamas from Gaza, it empowered militias led by the Palestinian group’s enemies, assisting and providing them with military support in an attempt to present them as an alternative to Hamas’s rule in the enclave.

One of the more prominent examples is led by Hussam Al-Astal, 50, a former officer in the Palestinian Authority’s security service who was accused by colleagues in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas of collaborating with Israel in the 1990s and of assassinating a high-ranking Hamas official in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His group, which calls itself “The Strike Force Against Terror,” has cemented its control over Qizan Al-Najjar, a village south of Rafah, which Astal describes as a haven for those opposed to Hamas. “Today in my area, we have no war,” Astal said in a phone interview Friday, adding that others are expected to come and that anyone entering the area was vetted for ties to Hamas. “If you come here, you’ll see children playing. We have water, electricity, safety.”

This article reports that Astal’s group was, in fact, fighting Hamas. It was recently involved in one of the bloodiest instances of intra-Palestinian fighting in the enclave, when a Hamas unit attacked a neighborhood in Khan Yunis in a bid to arrest members of a prominent clan accused of collaborating with Israel. In the ensuing firefight, five clansmen were killed, local sources say. Astal’s forces claim they killed 20 Hamas gunmen. It is not clear how these internecine conflicts will play out even if Israel and Hamas end their current war.

Fraud Common in Drug Rehab Industry 

Wall Street Journal

Fraud has become a multimillion-dollar problem in America’s booming rehab industry. This article reports that networks of recruiters are paid to target people, often from rural areas with high rates of drug use and few options for rehab, with promises of recovery in glamorous seaside locations. Federal and state law prohibits paying for patient referrals, but the insurance money is so good that it makes it worthwhile for rehab centers to pay to recruit patients – often referred to as clients – and fly them across the country. 

Patients themselves rarely pay premiums. Instead, brokers help them purchase plans under the Affordable Care Act, where federal subsidies can mean no out-of-pocket costs for people below a certain income. They also broker patients who are on their parents’ insurance. … The rehabs are often in locations that people might be tempted to travel to, such as beachside cities in Florida. It’s become especially prevalent in California, where operators have discovered a steady stream of revenue by luring people with addiction from across the country and billing their private insurance. Lawsuits and federal cases allege that rehabs can charge insurance hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few months’ stay, but offer little in the way of treatment. When the money runs out, they kick the patients out without support or referrals, regardless of whether or not they’ve recovered – a practice known as “patient dumping” or “curbing.” In court filings, these rehabs generally blame the insurers for trying to get out of paying for legitimate treatment by filing lawsuits.

This article reports that many dumped patients end up back on the streets, joining the swelling ranks of homeless.

VA Wastes Billions on Dubious & Fraudulent Claims 

Washington Post

This multi-part investigative series reports that military veterans are swamping the U.S. government with dubious disability claims — including cases of brazen fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars. The first article in the series reports:

Taxpayers will spend roughly $193 billion this year for the Department of Veterans Affairs to compensate about 6.9 million disabled veterans on the presumption that their ability to work is impaired. VA officials say most veterans’ disability claims are legitimate. Yet The Post found that … about 556,000 veterans receive disability benefits for eczema, 332,000 for hemorrhoids, 110,000 for benign skin growths, 81,000 for acne and 74,000 for varicose veins, the most recently available figures from VA show. Individual payouts for such mundane conditions vary, but collectively they cost billions of dollars a year. In contrast, far fewer veterans receive compensation for certain combat-related injuries. About 10,900 service members who have suffered “severe” or “penetrating” brain injuries since 2000 are eligible for benefits. Fewer than 1,700 receive disability payments for losing limbs during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a separate article, the Post reported that a system with insufficient oversight that is geared toward providing benefits has led any veterans to “stretch the truth about their conditions and apply for 10, 20 or even 30 disabilities per person to maximize their compensation. Sometimes, the exaggerations cross the line into outright fraud. … In 2017, after the Florida trial of an Army veteran who duped VA out of $394,000 by pretending to be blind, prosecutors acknowledged the disability program “may be systematically flawed” because of weak checks and balances.

Iowa Superintendent’s Bio Was Too Good to Be True 

New York Times

Ian Roberts was a former Olympic athlete for his native Guyana who earned a master’s degree from St. John’s University in 2000.  That same year, this article reports, his application to become a permanent resident of the United States was turned down – perhaps because of an earlier arrest on drug charges. Instead of returning home, he moved to Baltimore, where he worked as a teacher for five years before becoming a principal. His steady rise continued. In 2023 he was named superintendent of the Des Moines schools. It has all come crashing down last month with revelations that he has been living in the U.S. illegally. This article asks: “How could someone the government says should be removed from the country have risen to lead the public school system of a large American city?”

Some said the school board had not done enough to vet his credentials and suggested that its members resign. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said Dr. Roberts “should have never been able to work around children.” The Justice Department said it would investigate whether the district’s affirmative action goals and diversity hiring programs had violated federal law. … Some said the school board had not done enough to vet his credentials and suggested that its members resign. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said Dr. Roberts “should have never been able to work around children.” The Justice Department said it would investigate whether the district’s affirmative action goals and diversity hiring programs had violated federal law.

This article reports that Jackie Norris, who is the chair of the Des Moines School Board and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, said the district had followed the law and relied on an outside firm, JG Consulting, to evaluate Roberts’s qualifications. She said Roberts claimed on an I-9 form that he was an American citizen and that he provided a Social Security card and driver’s license. Some noncitizens have authentic Social Security cards and driver’s licenses, and other records suggest that he had both. She said the school district does not use E-Verify, a program that checks documents against federal databases.

Harvard Students Skip Class, Still Get High Grades 

New York Times

Getting into Harvard is the hard part. Once admitted, this article reports, many of its students skip class and fail to do the reading and still earn high grades, according to the Classroom Social Compact Committee, a group of seven faculty members that produced a report on Harvard’s classroom culture.

When they do show up for class, they are focused on their devices, and are reluctant to speak out. Sometimes it is because they are afraid of sharing ideas that others will disagree with. But often, they have not read enough of the homework to make a meaningful contribution, the report continued. Rampant grade inflation allows them to coast through anyway, it concluded. That means many students graduate without having benefited from talking very much with their teachers and peers, and they stay stuck in ideological bubbles, unwilling or unable to engage with challenging ideas.

This article reports that recorded lectures students can watch online has reduced the need to go to class. This article also supports the Trump administration’s claims about liberal bias. On student told the Times that “She found the discussions in a course that examined whether the civil war was still being fought today “insightful.” But outside of class was a different story. ‘My first two years were very politically charged,’ she said. Liberal views dominate at Harvard, and it could be uncomfortable for someone who has a mix of liberal and conservative views, as she does.