Comment by neilv

If you just looked at all the undergrads trying to find ways to cheat on their homework, exams, and job interviews, it'd be easy to imagine that university lab science conducted by those same people is also full of cheating whenever they thought they could get away with it.

But I've wondered whether maybe some of the fabrications are just sloppy work tracking so many artifacts.

You might be experienced enough with computers to have filing conventions and workflow tools, around which you could figure out how to accurately keep track of numerous lab equipment artifacts, including those produced by multiple team members, and have traceability from publication figures all the way to original imaging or data. But is this something everyone involved in a university lab would be able to do reliably?

I'm sure there's a lot of dishonesty going on, because people going into the hard sciences can be just as shitty as your average Leetcode Cadet. But maybe some genuine scientists could use better computer tools and skills?