This story lacks a lot of context. This linked article provides some of it:

https://forbetterscience.com/2020/10/07/gregg-semenza-real-n...

There's a big range between "grad student loaded the wrong file when making sub-panel 3d" and "explicitly falsified images to support an hypothesis". This article certainly makes it seem like the latter.

Science is a human endeavor and there will always be people trying to game the system The good news is, an awful lot of cheaters get caught these days and it's getting riskier all the time.