alt Hacker Newsyou're right about the phrase, its basically an assertion that "we're all cheating scum, so I have no choice but to be a cheating scum myself", which is hugely corrosive. and in this case its the funding system more broadly that's imposing these non-goals from above that are incentivizing bad science.
but why are they imposing these structures? to try to weed out the cheating scum. once you start walking down that path, you're signing up for a distortion of value.
As I said to the parent poster, that's not what it means at all. It means that you should look at the system's incentives, not the behavior of individuals as the root cause of any issues.
You don't need to be a "cheating scum" to succeed, but there are not enough checks in place to prevent that from being a successful strategy for someone who wouldn't succeed otherwise.
The people who need to change the most are the nameless "they" who issue funding because they have the most control over these systems, along with the publishing cartel which has almost no redeeming value in today's environment.