From my own experiences this is the tip of the iceberg, but the majority isn't fraud per se, more like questionable research practices that cumulatively amount to something similar. So maybe not making up data, but fishing (either variables, people, or models) until you find the right combination. On top of that are all the misuses of things, that aren't really fishing, but rather use of methods that produce significant findings, but for reasons other than what is assumed.
This is exactly right. About half of the people I've seen leave MIT for faculty positions at better schools engaged in these kinds of academic fraud. I only saw one case of outright fabrication, but publishing results which the research knew they had no support for? Very common.
Re-analyzing data 20 times, changing methodologies (median versus mean, handling of outliers, etc.) typically is enough to get an interesting result, and isn't enough to raise alarms. Most people are competent enough to do something like that.
Credit theft is rampant at MIT as well. Financial schemes too. No one does a darned thing about it either.
Look up Darrel Huff [1][2]. When there’s enough money on the table, there’s lots of funding (sincere or otherwise) that’s used to try to establish a scientific counter narrative. Stuff like this is more run of the mill corruption than what you see with things like climate change where the underpinnings of the entire industrial economy is at stake (or milder things like Jule).