"Scientific fraud doesn't make sense, why would you claim you can turn mercury into gold when everyone can see you can't" well because the vast vast vast majority of scientific fraud is not Elizabeth Holmes Theranos level chicanery but instead juicing the numbers (or the Western blots) to make the results more statistically significant in what is otherwise a fairly minor & straightforward paper
You're a grad student. You're already a semester behind. One of your experimental replicates failed halfway through a 6 week experiment and you didn't notice til you collected the data. You no longer have the statistical power you need and have to start over, with money you don't have and no time. Telling no one and making up some numbers that supports the pattern you can see in the other data is a huge temptation.
And if you succeed at that fraud—because, realistically, no one is going to check—the deadlines don't stop coming and that temptation is always there. You need another grant, you need another publication, another pilot study, on and on and on.
The people who finally get nabbed for scientific fraud, like spider biologist Jonathan Pruitt or the many medical researchers Elisabeth Bik catches, typically were getting away with it for yearsss. And none of them were claiming they could cure the common cold or turn dogshit into gold. They were publishing unassuming papers, with reasonable results. The pressure for publishing above all else is a perverse incentive.
