I mean, there is nothing wrong with simplifying your assumptions - spherical cows etc - if it let's you avoid a whole lot of additional complexity and still giv

I mean, there is nothing wrong with simplifying your assumptions - spherical cows etc - if it let's you avoid a whole lot of additional complexity and still gives a useful model - and I think that was the case for the "2D waves" assumption. So I wouldn't immediately call it fraud. The danger occurs if people take the model as orthodoxy and dismiss any deviation as impossible. I think in the case of "freak waves" you could actually watch the change in public attitude over the last decades: They used to be seen as physically impossible and basically sailor's yarn - until eyewitness accounts kept accumulating. Eventually, we got empirical evidence in the form of satellite images and they were accepted as a real, if unexplained phenomenon. And now we seem to be getting the first verifiable theories that offer causal explanations and allow to predict and reason about them. All in all, this seems like a good example of scientific progress to me (except it would be nice of we could get to this point earlier in the future with fewer lifes lost).