Eh, very few fraudsters start with a plan to commit fraud. More often than not, it's legitimate intent, but then thoughts happen along the lines of "I could mak

Eh, very few fraudsters start with a plan to commit fraud. More often than not, it's legitimate intent, but then thoughts happen along the lines of "I could make my ten years of work much more effective by just being a tiny little bit dishonest!" And then it becomes, "but now I have to lie about this other slightly bigger thing too, else it will become suspicious!" And eventually, "now that I've already lied so much, I might just make stuff up." Particularly in research, where you may be working on the same idea for decades, it can be damning when you realize that the idea might just be fruitless. If all you had to do was remove one or two zeroes, and finally your colleagues would praise instead of mock you, wouldn't that be great?