Publish or perish. The stakes are incredibly high. Cheating may be the difference between keeping and losing your job.
Especially since everyone else is aware of that. If you don't take the risk, you will lose to someone who did and got away with it.
This researcher is in China, where I gather the competition is even fiercer than in the West. I do not know that for a fact, but if it is true it makes it even clearer.
Viewed that way it's not foolish. It's actually mandatory. And it's just going to get more prominent as the AI makes fewer mistakes, and competitors get better at spotting and removing them.
Man... This is so sad, disappointing and worrying. For some reason, your explanation in particular struck a nerve with me. Who could have predicted all the nuanced social consequences that AI would bring upon us. I don't yet know what position to take in my head on all of this. It's too much change, despite believing that the world will change and adapt. In particular, that human work will become more valuable - but as a craft. As an endeavor you do because it's artful, not because it's mandatory, or the most optimal way to quality or speed. And those two categories - human and ai work - will become very separate. While the economical value or even expectations of absolute quality in the human work will plummet.
Similarly, I expect "raw"-ness to gain on value. Photos untouched by AI or filters. Physical objects. The non-digital. Who knows, maybe physical media will make a comeback.
Either way, it's not good times we're living through, and I don't particularly appreciate all of this happening after *just* becoming an adult in the world.