Because academia shouldn't be a tit-for-tat game played by people who wish to score points against each other in a game of judge-jury-executioner. If you don't

Because academia shouldn't be a tit-for-tat game played by people who wish to score points against each other in a game of judge-jury-executioner. If you don't condone a particular colleagues attitudes or actions or reported actions - by all means please do say so in your footnotes and citations. Make sure your colleagues know of your discomfort and that they should also be discomforted by people like that being in a place where they are enabled to contribute to the field - when they should be driven from it. However, under no account should one defraud one's editors and/or reviewers - or your colleagues who trust your work has been reviewed and approved by them. To do so is plainly dishonest and deprives those people of their right to autonomy. You aren't forced to cite, but then they don't have to approve - or read - either. If you have to lie and cheat to people in order to get your way - perhaps what your doing is wrong, because you're certainly doing wrong to those people. At what point do you opt out of a system with which you disagree? Is it morally acceptable to commit an unjust act to achieve what you believe to be justice? Is it acceptable to venerate vigilantism - to be a vigilante? I would say that it certainly isn't - in precisely the same way using unjustly or immorally obtained data is unacceptable.