Comment by neom

I'm the furthest thing from a scientist unless you count 3,000 hours of PBS spacetime, but I love science and so science/academia fraud to me, feels kinda like the worst kinda fraud you can commit. Financial fraud can cause suicides and ruin in lives, sure, but I feel like academic fraud just sets the whole of humanity back? I also feel that through my life I've (maybe wrongly) placed a great deal of respect and trust in scientists, mostly that they understand that their work is of the upmost importance and so the downstream consequences of mucking around are just too grave. Stuff like this seems to bother me more than it rationally should. Are people who commit this type of science fraud just really evil humans? Am I over thinking this? Do scientists go to jail for academic fraud?