The context here is from the root comment: “Are people who commit this type of science fraud just really evil humans?”. “Just really evil” implies that that there is no other explanation, and that the fraud is committed as a function of them being “really evil”.

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.