TIL there is no corruption and scientific plagiarism in democratic countries. It's not like the minister of education of the democratic country I live in, Annette Schawan, had to resign in 2013 because of plagiarism in her PhD thesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Schavan#Plagiarism
The tendency for fraud and bad science to appear everywhere shows how easy it is to appear. Scientists basically always have had to battle against people's tendency to towards fraud and to believe whatever is convenient. But this battle is even harder in a society without open debate and where connections are a determining factor for success.