The AUTHORS of the original paper got a dataset from a company. They didn't assume the fraud from the start and published the paper based on it.
Later, when they tried to analyze the issue more in-depth, they couldn't replicate the results. THE ORIGINAL AUTHORS PUBLISHED a paper about a failure to replicate. It was just then that someone looked at the original data and found that it was faked.
The fear of reputational implosion is apparently insufficient.
I did completely read what was available to me without having an account.
> The AUTHORS of the original paper got a dataset from a company. They didn't assume the fraud from the start and published the paper based on it.
My comment is not about who the culprit is or isn't. Indeed, I don't mention anything about it.
Rather, it's about how, as the title says, a WIDELY cited paper has fabricated data following rather (IMO) obvious red flag patterns and none of the people -who cited the paper- raised issues about that.
Thus, I questioned whether scientists read or not the papers they cite in the parent post. The question is not a judgment, I'm just truly curious since I'm not part of the formal academia, just an undergraduate.