Nope. “Evil” still provides no explanation and no understanding of why and how things happen there. It’s the same thing as believing in miracles created by a god.
I don’t actually know what people mean when they label someone as “evil”, other than “is doing/saying/thinking stuff I find very reprehensible”. Which doesn’t make sense when you insert it into the above statement: “Are people who commit this type of science fraud just humans who do stuff I find really reprehensible?” Well, I guess it sounds like they are.
It seems like people want to assign a character trait when they say “person X is evil”, but I don’t believe such a generic character trait exists (and what exactly it is supposed to mean if it existed). What’s worse, it obfuscates and prevents understanding the actual character traits and circumstances that lead to the respective behavior.
However, by removing empathy, we also reduce the possibility to understand the human motivations behind heinous acts (there always are), find solutions, build bridges, make truces, end wars. So maybe we should go lightly on the "evil" stuff, as much as possible.