Enough of the people participating in any kind of social stuff lie whether they think it's real or not.

Social science aka sociology doesn't exist. It's all make believe, sabotage and (psychological) extortion and blackmail--aka peer pressure, within the constraints of the context and how the individuals project that context into the real world (or are convinced by others of a certain projection for some amount of time).

Sociology and psychology are situational assessments and measurements. All soft sciences are. They are not even sciences in isolated contexts. They are collections of methods that can be turned to dust by "a better", more fun, "more logical" argument, which is impossible to debate rationally.

Not lying for the sake of science is often enough disregarded even by scientists, which aligns perfectly with what you describe.