RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

January 11 to January 17

Featured Investigation:

To Combat Academic Fraud, Scholars

Confront Hallowed Tradition

In the fourth article of his series on academic fraud, Vince Bielski reports for RealClearInvestigations that a growing number of universities and researchers in Europe and the U.S. are challenging academia's hallowed "publish or perish" mandate, arguing it has corrupted scientific pursuit and eroded public trust in research. 

• Reformers at top institutions including Cambridge, Sorbonne, and UC Berkeley say the traditional system has produced an explosion of low-quality research with minimal impact on academic fields or society.
• The current incentive system rewards scholars for frequently publishing in high-impact journals based on Journal Impact Factor (JIF) scores, even when individual articles lack influence. Studies show JIF is determined by a small number of influential papers, casting undeserved glory on marginal work.
• Professor Mike Dougherty's analysis of 45,000 papers found no evidence that higher-impact journals publish higher-quality research. The metric is easily manipulated and even the publisher of the prestigious Nature warns against overreliance on JIF.
• Pressure to publish in prestigious journals leads researchers to avoid experimental risks, chase trends, and suppress negative findings. "Salami slicing" data into multiple thin papers floods the system, making quality control nearly impossible.
• Fraudulent research from "paper mills" is growing faster than legitimate papers, according to a 2025 study, threatening science's legitimacy.
• The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), founded in 2012, has gathered signatures from 3,500 organizations and 23,000 individuals. In Europe, CoARA has enrolled 27% of Ph.D.-awarding universities since 2022.
• UK funders including UK Research and Innovation and Wellcome Trust now tie grants to reformed assessment practices, accelerating change. At Imperial College London, Professor Stefan Grimm's 2014 suicide while struggling to meet publication demands catalyzed reforms.
• U.S. adoption lags due to lack of federal funding pressure and faculty resistance. Departments fear being first to abandon traditional metrics. Only institutions like Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Biohub have fully embraced reform.
• Critics worry emphasis on practical applications will diminish fundamental research generating breakthrough ideas.
• No studies yet measure whether reformed incentives actually improve research quality, leaving a critical gap in accountability.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Questions Arise Over $5.8 Billion in Rental Assistance, RCI

California County Potentially Made Illegal Gifts, RCI

Lax Oversight of Oil, Gas Royaltie, RCI

Throwback Thursday- Tinder for Taxpayers, RCI

Maryland Replaces Stolen SNAP Benefits, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Congress Spurning Many of Trump’s Spending Cuts, New York Times

House Floor Meltdown Roils Republicans, Politico

D.C.’s New Lobbyists: Paid Online Influencers with Few Rules, Wall Street Journal

Trump’s ‘Superstar’ Appellate Judges Vote in His Favor, New York Times

Clintons Refuse to Testify in House Epstein Probe, AP

DC's Hottest Spot for Sunday Church Is MAGA Dive Bar, Vanity Fair

Former Sen. Sinema Accused of Affair with Bodyguard, Daily Mail

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Inside Minneapolis’s Sprawling Network of ICE Watchers 

Wall Street Journal

In the wake of the controversial death of Minneapolis activist Renee Good – who was fatally shot by an ICE agent as she impeded law enforcement efforts with her car – this article reports the rising friction between ICE and blue-city residents may grow worse in Minneapolis, a liberal, activist enclave uniquely positioned to mobilize, and sometimes antagonize, federal officers’ growing street-level presence. 

The Midwestern city teems with community patrols, hyperlocal rapid-response volunteers and hundreds of informal neighborhood-text networks—part of a protest culture that swelled after George Floyd’s murder to encourage residents to be “observers” who document law-enforcement interactions or rush to unfolding scenes. … [So-called] ICE watch groups have been crucial in letting immigrants know when they can safely go to school, church and the store, said Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political-science professor. … Residents said thousands across Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs belong to networks that spring into action when ICE officers appear. One south-side Signal group has nearly 1,000 members who share photos and videos of suspected ICE vehicles almost constantly as they try to identify operations in progress, according to chats viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

In a separate article, the New York Post reports that the Minnesota ICE Watch group that Good was a member of shared a detailed manual providing instructions on fighting police officers in order to free arrested radicals [and migrants] from their grasp, comparing each “de-arrest” to a “micro-intifada.”

The manual outlines four tactics for interfering with arresting officers, such as the best kind of grip to use while yanking someone in custody out of their hands, or even suggestions on “pushing and pulling an officer” off of an arrestee. … The fourth and final tactic involves “pressuring” cops to simply release individuals they’ve taken into custody, “totally surrounding” the officers, “or otherwise blocking them and/or their vehicle and chanting ‘Let them go!’ until the [law enforcement officers] cave to the mounting pressure. The manual boasts this particular technique has 'come out of the Palestine solidarity campus occupations.' "

In a separate article, Wired reports that right-wing creators and influencers like Nick Sortor and Cam Higby have descended on Minneapolis, filming protestors and interviewing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. “These creators have focused much of their content on how protestors are allegedly using personal vehicles and blocking traffic to obstruct ICE operations. In one video posted on Friday, Kevin Posobiec, a creator for the far-right Human Events website, highlighted how protesters seemingly shut down traffic in downtown Minneapolis. These clips are then reposted by popular aggregators, such as End Wokeness, and influencers, including Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire, who share them with millions of followers.

In a separate video, Nick Shirley, who brought wide attention to the Somali fraud in Minneapolis story through a previous viral video, alleges massive fraud in Minnesota’s non-emergency medical transportation sector, which helps people who do not need emergency care to get to and from medical appointments. He reports that more 90% of these businesses in Minnesota are Somali-owned.

‘Shoot to Kill’:

Accounts of Brutal Crackdown Emerge from Iran 

New York Times

As the Iranian authorities impose a near-total communication blackout on a country convulsed by mass protests, this article reports that videos and witness accounts slowly emerging suggest that the government is waging one of its deadliest crackdowns on unrest in more than a decade.

Eyewitnesses say government forces have begun opening fire, apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately, on unarmed protesters. Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures. One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation.” Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran: rows and rows of body bags. In videos uploaded by opposition activists on social media, families can be seen sobbing as they huddle together over bloodied corpses in unzipped bags. And in footage aired on Iranian state television, a morgue official, sheathed in blue scrubs, stands amid bags neatly arranged along the floor of a white room, under glaring fluorescent lights.

This Jan. 13 article reported that a senior Iranian health ministry official said about 3,000 people had been killed across the country but sought to shift the blame to “terrorists” fomenting unrest. 

In a separate article, the Wall Street Journal provides a more detailed, on-the-ground account of that crackdown by focusing on the deadly protests that erupted on Jan. 8. It focuses on the story of Robina Aminian, a politically engaged fashion student who headed out with a group of friends to join a protest that night. At some point they encountered government forces. “Aminian’s parents arrived in the Iranian capital early in the morning on Friday.” This article reports. “They found their daughter among hundreds of bodies. She had a bullet wound in the back of her head. Many of the other victims were also young women with injuries in the neck and face.”

U.S. Has Device That May Have Caused "Havana Syndrome" 

CBS News

Starting in 2016, U.S. and Canadian embassy workers in Cuba and other countries began reporting a range of debilitating cognitive problems, including dizziness, insomnia and headaches. No one could figure out what was causing these mysterious ailments which was dubbed “Havana Syndrome.” But now, this article reports, we may have an answer.

The U.S. government quietly acquired a device in late 2024 that officials believe may be connected to the debilitating condition known as Havana Syndrome, which more than 1,500 American officials have reported experiencing since 2016 … the Pentagon has been testing the device, which emits pulsed, radio-frequency energy, for more than a year, but did not offer details on the nature of the tests. They said the department's investigators believe it may be capable of reproducing the effects described by victims of Havana Syndrome, a term derived from the cases first reported by U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers in Havana, Cuba, in 2016. U.S. officials briefed some of their findings to congressional oversight committees last year.

In a separate article on her Substack, Sasha Ingber reports that the U.S. may have already had its own version of this weapon at least since 2018 and that it may have been used to apprehend Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro. “In the interview, a supposed Venezuelan security guard for Nicholas Maduro claimed that they were incapacitated during the Delta Force raid earlier this month. “It was like a very intense sound wave,” the person said. “Suddenly, I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.”

Pentagon Plan Calls for Major Power Shifts Within U.S. Military

Washington Post

The “Donroe Doctrine” isn’t just a catchy phrase. As part of an effort to bolster American power in the Western hemisphere, this article reports that senior Pentagon officials are planning to downgrade several of the U.S. military’s major headquarters and shift the balance of power among its top generals.

If adopted, the plan would usher in some of the most significant changes at the military’s highest ranks in decades, in part following through on Hegseth’s promise to break the status quo and slash the number of four-star generals in the military. It would reduce in prominence the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command by placing them under the control of a new organization known as U.S. International Command … Such moves would complement other efforts by the administration to shift resources from the Middle East and Europe and focus foremost on expanding military operations in the Western Hemisphere, these people said.

This article reports that those familiar with the plan said it aligns with the Trump administration’s national security strategy, released this month, which declares that the “days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.”

Illegal Aliens Cost Texas Hospitals $1B in 2025 

Brandon Waltens, Texas Scorecard

Federal law and conscience require hospitals to deliver care to anyone in need – regardless of their ability to pay or their immigration status. No surprise, then, that the flood of poor, illegal immigrants that crossed the border during the Biden administration has driven up health-care costs. This article reports the price tag for Texas hospitals during the 2025 fiscal year was well north of $1 billion.

Statewide totals show 313,742 hospital visits from patients not legally present in the U.S., costing hospitals $1.05 billion during the reporting period. The largest share of the expense – more than $565 million – came from inpatient discharges for non-Medicaid and non-CHIP patients. Emergency department visits accounted for roughly $230 million, while total inpatient care exceeded $820 million, underscoring that long-term hospitalizations, not emergency treatment alone, are driving much of the cost.

This article reports that the actual price tag is actually much higher than $1 billion because the law requiring hospitals to submit data regarding such care only kicked in in November 2024, leaving the first two months of fiscal year 2025 – September and October – unreported. It also reports that unpaid medical costs are ultimately passed along to Texans. Taxpayers absorb the burden through higher insurance rates, public hospital funding, and state health programs.