Comment by throwaway4837

The cost of pursuing dead ends in science is NECESSARY and much greater than the cost of pursuing fraudulent results, albeit the latter being unnecessary. Probably 70%+ of time is wasted on paths that lead to nowhere, and that is part of the process. I would guess less than 1% of time is wasted because of manipulation. The process finds fraudsters (bad) well enough, and the process of being wrong (good) will always be central to science, even though it's so expensive.