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I think the point you're making is that there need not have been any malicious intent, and I accept that, but I don't really consider this a devil's advocate position, since strongly believing something will work is still not grounds enough to lie about outcomes.

Fraud is still fraud no matter what color you paint it.

I don't think "Fraud" counts as a devil's advocate position?

It's really not an excuse. This has directly led to decades of wasted time/money/effort searching for a cure of a very prevalent disease.

It does lend to an interesting thought experiment, though.

Imagine the researchers were right after all. They just needed more time, and so they faked some results. We might have ended up with an underdog/feel-good movie about how the researchers bravely persevered in spite of the drying up of their funding.

Not so bad because they were just trying to secure funding that might have gone to research not based on fraud?

What’s the difference?

I'm sympathetic to that: the pressure to have produced results must have been very, very heavy.