The article calls out the reason why this happens in academia: administrators need to perform the thorough investigations even if things appear obvious in order

The article calls out the reason why this happens in academia: administrators need to perform the thorough investigations even if things appear obvious in order to protect themselves against a lawsuit. See what’s happening with Francesca Gino for example: she’s suing Harvard and the four scientists who uncovered her fraud for $25 million, and you can bet that she would win (or at least make it very expensive for the defendants) unless the evidence is very strong. Institutions are obviously incentivized to not prosecute misconduct strongly, or at least not until the misconduct is so blatantly obvious it cannot be ignored.