While this specific example may not be one of academic fraud it is important not to underestimate the ease in fabricating data, especially if it is for a projec

While this specific example may not be one of academic fraud it is important not to underestimate the ease in fabricating data, especially if it is for a project no one really cares about. You can't even apply the logic of 'if this is from a respected lab it must be authentic' because papers from such labs are rarely reviewed with care by either the editors of the journal or the PI (the professor in charge) due to the reputation of said professor. What I find far worse is the lack of rigor in many labs, little errors like overgrowing your cells or incorrectly calibrating an instrument can cause drastic phenotype changes that renders any results moot without being obvious, no one would bothers to check that the basics of lab work are correctly implemented. I have personally witnessed such errors, which when caught, were not reported as an addendum. The problem with these errors is that there exists data to back up the claims but the data is invalid, but that is extremely hard to prove. Often when a lab with a systematic error affecting their results is questioned they would simply repeat the experiments and send the raw data to the investigator and that would be that. Fabricating data on the other hand is much easier to prove as there is no underlying true data, such as instrument measurements, and the experiment will never be repeatable.