For example i might "explain" to you that clean code is about writing the least amount of code possible and you might start code golfing your production systems.

If you want to know what the paper says, read the paper. Journalists are not scientists, most of them do not have the necessary knowledge to understand academic papers, nor do they have an incentive for doing it well. They do have an incentive for generating clicks though, generally by twisting the truth to make things sound more interesting or provoking than they are.