Not very surprising. There are incentives to publish, especially surprising stuff (so you can call it ground breaking) and no incentives to be right in a sense

Not very surprising. There are incentives to publish, especially surprising stuff (so you can call it ground breaking) and no incentives to be right in a sense that your results align with reality. Imagine spending time to prepare a paper then collecting data just to see it doesn't show what you hoped it shows. Your choices are to bin several weeks/months of you work to the detriment of your career or help a bit so the data behaves. The risk is close to 0, the reward (or lack of punishment) is clear. It's crazy to not expect significant % of individuals facing the choice going with the massaging the data option. It all flies in social science because most of the stuff they "research" range from interesting but not very useful curiosities to completely pointless. No devices are being built based on it. No serious investment being made. No policies are going to be affected or if they are then studies are picked for ideological compliance not for describing reality well. You're also not going to face a lawsuit as you might in say medicine. "Your honour, I've read the study , started breaking the rules and got expelled from school" is not going to get you far.