It doesn't matter if the something lived or not, for the forger it only matters if the forgery resembles something his mark very much wants to acquire, or to believe he has.
As P.T. Barnum said, "There's one born every minute."
And all this is happening outside of science and irrelevant to it.
It can muddy the water so to speak, as far as the lay person is concerned, who generally has to rely on popularizers of science (having neither the time nor training to read peer-review journals); and they are used to hearing statements such as "Dr. XX of University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople" (apologies to Prof. Peter Schickele, there) has "proved that blah blah blah...".
To the lay person, most pronouncements of science are statements of authority; and frauds such as the one that started this thread, politicization of global warming, Tobacco Institute scientists, and debacles such as Thalidomide and Vioxx don't help the reputation of science much.
Cheers!
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHA!
PDQ is a classic.
Vioxx was just determined to be able to be sold. The whole class of drugs had more positive effect than negative. The whole hearing was on CSPAN.
It turns out, the publicity on the negative effects was mostly from trial lawyers. The drugs cure pain in people who otherwise would be house bound. Patients and their doctors pleaded to keep the drugs, saying quality of life was more important to them than a slight upward risk of heart attack, that could be managed now that the problem was understood.
It turns out that the people at risk of heart attack were the people who already were more at risk.