I do think that you can tell apart these cases. Outright fabricated data is very different from p-hacking, which is very different from a meaningless garbage pa

I do think that you can tell apart these cases. Outright fabricated data is very different from p-hacking, which is very different from a meaningless garbage paper. On the other hand, convenient laboratory errors might be hard to tell apart from fabrication (though not always, sometimes people get caught using photoshop), and statistical incompetence might be hard to tell apart from p-hacking. So I agree this is why it's hard to punish fraud.