Ugh, shiver. I've seen a variety of "problematic" data analysis behavior by very senior people, so I have no trouble believing this story. Nor do I blame you fo

Ugh, shiver. I've seen a variety of "problematic" data analysis behavior by very senior people, so I have no trouble believing this story. Nor do I blame you for not elaborating to random internet people. Although it is sad that his intimidation was not only rewarded, but apparently intimidated you right out of the field. But IME, they usually try to cover their bases by (fake?) incompetence, rather than this kind of thing. That is, they claim to be unable to see severe problems even when the evidence is placed right in front of them. Plausible deniability, I guess. In your example, it would be like "I don't see why we can't build Skynet. And if we claim to have built Skynet and have overstated our case, we can just fix it in future work. Anyway, who cares what we claim as long as we made a good-faith effort and get that next grant funded." Personally though, I doubt whether most fabricated data is fabricated by PIs themselves, but by postdocs etc put exactly under the kind of impossible pressure you're describing. Then, of course, they can take credit for the successes and pretend to be shocked and outraged if the fabrication ever comes to light. The VW scandal probably happens somewhere in science daily. I agree with your conclusion. Also, the distribution of "credit" or "popularity" is highly exponential in any field, so this proposal would just exacerbate the already rich-and-senior get more rich-and-senior phenomenon.