This is the thing, there is tons of academic dishonesty in the hard sciences too. The whole "Publish or Perish."
"Academic dishonesty in publishing is a significant and growing problem across hard sciences, driven by intense "publish or perish" pressures. The misconduct, which includes fraud, plagiarism, and manipulated peer reviews, undermines scientific integrity, damages public trust, and can lead to the retraction of thousands of scientific papers"
Analyses of PubMed retractions (Fang, Steen, & Casadevall, 2012, PNAS) suggest about 67% of retractions in biomedical and life sciences are due to misconduct (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism).
When asked about colleagues, the numbers were higher: ~14% for fabrication/falsification and up to 72% for questionable practices.
Questionable Research Practices:
Beyond outright fraud, there's a broader category of behavior called "questionable research practices" (QRPs). These are actions that violate good research practices but may not constitute outright fraud. They include things like:
P-hacking: Selectively analyzing data to find a statistically significant result.
HARKing: Hypothesizing after the results are known.
Selective reporting: Not reporting data that don't support the hypothesis.
Improper authorship: Including someone as an author who didn't contribute significantly.
Studies show a much higher prevalence of these practices. The 2009 meta-analysis found that up to 33.7% of scientists admitted to engaging in questionable research practices.
