Grad students have invested years of their life, for no reward, in research on a niche topic. Any ding to their reputation will adversely effect their entire career. I doubt this guy would get a post doc fellowship anywhere after this.

> Any ding to their reputation will adversely effect their entire career.

If this is foolproof, then no-one should be talking about the replication crisis.

People don't do bad things _expecting_ to be caught, if they haven't already convinced themselves they're not doing anything bad at all. And I suspect it's surprisingly easy to convince people that they won't get caught.

But they published papers about their misconduct... I don't know how they haven't been sanctioned already.

Replication is really a different problem. It's possible for you to do nothing wrong, run hundreds of trials, get a great result and publish it. But it was due to noise/error/unknown factors, and can't be replicated. The crisis is also that replication receives no academic recognition.

When people fabricate results they know it's an offence, the problem with these guys is they don't even acknowledge/understand the ethical rule they are breaking.

Well, there's nothing easier to corrupt than a small company (not just in the PRC), because you could found one specifically to introduce vulnerabilities without breaking any laws in any country I know of.