If you need 50 experiments to actually show that the effect exists, then even a small fraction of fraudulent experiments can heavily skew the result when looking at confidence intervals.
Think of selfhealing as a coin toss with 50/50 chance and a medication increasing this chance:
a) Medication increases healing chances to 80% -> Only few experiments needed.
b) Medication increases healing chances to 55% -> Many experiments needed to prove that the effect exists.
c) Medication is not effective but 5% fraud is introduced so that data shows 55% healing chances -> The same as in b) but with only "a little" fraud involoved.
A major flaw I see in most medications studies is that the market prices for the experimental drug or placebo are not included in the study.
My hypothesis is that a placebo described as costing $1000 per dose will produce a greater effect than a placebo described as costing $10 per dose, even if the patients are not asked to pay that cost.
Could it be that those drugs that barely outperform a gratis placebo are only producing that effect because the act of charging more for them makes them better placebos?
If that's the case, the fraud would only be needed to eliminate evidence of harm to get approval for a bogus remedy. All the effectiveness would come from magnified placebo effect.
Think of selfhealing as a coin toss with 50/50 chance and a medication increasing this chance:
a) Medication increases healing chances to 80% -> Only few experiments needed.
b) Medication increases healing chances to 55% -> Many experiments needed to prove that the effect exists.
c) Medication is not effective but 5% fraud is introduced so that data shows 55% healing chances -> The same as in b) but with only "a little" fraud involoved.