What evidence/data have you used to form your opinion in regards to hard sciences? I don't necessarily disagree, but considering the subject matter, I feel compelled to press you for a data-supported justification.
I've seen copious bad papers in EE and MechE journals. I'm not qualified to evaluate chem or physics research, but you'd think if any field would be hard to fudge, it would be engineering. Turns out this is not the case. The bad engineering papers I've seen tend to draw overly-broad conclusions while failing to document the methods adequately.
Same question. I would assume this is partially based on replicability, or doing the study over and getting the same results. Recently, there was an attempt to replicate major studies in psychology and only about 36% were replicated. I think something similar was in medicine.