It doesn't require any malicious intent. An alternative possibility is that the things they were researching just weren't likely in the first place. If an effec

It doesn't require any malicious intent. An alternative possibility is that the things they were researching just weren't likely in the first place. If an effect that only has a 5% chance of being true in the first place, then even if you confirm it with a 95% confidence the chance that it is a fluke could still be as high as 50%. This can be made worse if you test several different hypothesis, only report successful experiments, and don't replicate them.