It illustrates that there is a real risk to lying about research results: if you get caught it's embarrassing.
It's also worth taking professional integrity into account. Even if OpenAI's culture didn't value the truth individual researchers still care about being honest.
This exact statement could be said about literally any corporation or organization. And yet, corporations still lie and mislead, because deception helps you make money and acquire funding.
In OpenAI’s case, this isn’t exactly the first time they’ve been caught doing something ethically misguided:
It's also worth taking professional integrity into account. Even if OpenAI's culture didn't value the truth individual researchers still care about being honest.