With scientific papers (especially reports on early pre-peer reviewed papers), it’s always best check the updated source material - for instance, the pre-release paper quoted in the first two articles never went to publication because they couldn’t duplicate the results (the basis of Science being that things are observable, measurable, and repeatable).
https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907# (updated paper a year after the initial paper).
The third link was referring to this paper from last year
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay9672
The scientist quoted said "may have been smaller", not "were smaller’
The joy of Science is that if it finds something that doesn’t fit with previous findings, it’s announced, investigated, and peer-reviewed - the first two examples you provided couldn’t be validated, and the third has found a single source anomaly which is being investigated further; the third paper doesn’t say "the laws of physics can vary", it states
"we find a spatial variation is preferred over a no-variation model at the 3.9σ level.."
Here’s the layman’s version of that third paper.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020...stant-in-time/
tl:dr - something that differed from previous findings has occurred, more investigations needed.
btw, you keep bringing up the fact that your father is a physicist - may I ask which branch of physics he specialises in, as Physics is an enormous field (for example, my God-son has a Degree and a Masters in Astrophysics, but I wouldn’t expect him to be an expert or to keep up to date with advances in Nuclear Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Geophysics, or any of the other complex areas of Physics).