Ask HN: What do you think about a law that criminalizes faking and doctoring data for their research? Clearly we need greater punitive consequences for these types of behavior that's becoming an epidemic in research.
The threat of career-ending shame & humiliation is remote and unlikely. As another poster said much further up-thread, there is more fraud going on that doesn't get detected.
Criminal penalties in this realm are a bit draconian. More punishment & punity is not the answer.
I'd go the opposite way and give job security to anyone who is doing solid science to remove some of the weird incentives. There is upside to be amazing and win prizes or get better positions, but there is also space for people to "just" reproduce, or generally do important but non-glamorous stuff.