[motohagiography]

Fraud like this is next-order dispicable because of the knock-on effects it has on knowledge and policy. I don't know that stating that is going to have an effect on people who engage in fraud as a matter of course or as passive parties to it, but here we are. The incentives here are what makes most research an unsuitable substitute or appeal to authority for pubic policy. It's a proxy for a petty elitism, and it means to "trust science," just becomes scientistic nihilism. After all, these days you don't need popular consent when you have scientists.

Reading reports like this, I can see why there has been so much criticism in recent years of the concept of the banality of evil, and why so many researchers affect concern for the environment, because more than anyone, they seem to understand what it means to be responsible for poisoning an ecosystem and they need to get out in front of those narratives. Sure, it's just a bit of fraud in a journal, just like it's just a bit of PCB or mercury in a lake, and only a minority of the population who will be impacted, but someone has to call it out as nihilism, or we're a party to it as well.

As much as I dislike blockchain ideas, it makes me think a blockchain DAG of metadata about the integrity of published papers for citations, reproducability, and evidence of certain types of fraud would rebalance the incentives a bit.