It depends on the field, but medicine has replication rates [1] that are so absurdly low that it's near to impossible for there not to be significant scale shenanigans going on in the research:
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'A 2012 research paper found that only 11% of 53 pre-clinical cancer studies had replications that could confirm conclusions from the original studies.[79] In late 2021, The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology examined 53 top papers about cancer published between 2010 and 2012 and showed that among studies that provided sufficient information to be redone, the effect sizes were 85% smaller on average than the original findings.[80][81] Another report estimated that almost half of randomized controlled trials contained flawed data (based on the analysis of anonymized individual participant data (IPD) from more than 150 trials).[83]
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There's also a simple pragmatic issue. When finding something is effective gives you billions of dollars in profits, and finding it ineffective gives you millions in losses, you have motivations beyond just the truth. This is where regulatory agencies are supposed to come into play, yet those agencies tend to be staffed (if not lead) by people from the exact same companies they're supposed to be regulating.
Yes it is a systemic issue. A cursory search for academic research fraud will reveal this. Some fraudsters are very high profile. There are all kinds of perverse incentives; prestige, grant money, not wanting to waste time with ‘useless’ negative results.
The unofficial motto in academy: "cheat or perish"
but well... people gets what they asked for, so everybody should be happy with the current situation.
If cheaters have the money it means also that somebody has zero money. Is a double loss. This people simply pass over the other researchers and push them out of the road.
