Why do so many of these fake papers and studies get published and accepted as fact? Probably because very few are properly reviewed (reviewers are in agreement about the issue) and the papers or studies and never tested by replicating the studies.
The scientific method calls for a scientist to first challenge their premise. If tests support their hypothesis, they publish their results to others for peer review and further testing.
Unfortunately, we now have many actors publishing hypotheses backed by falsified results as facts. Politicians and journalists don’t seem to know difference.
These “scientists” should be drummed from the community.
But now it’s “all about the Benjamins.”
And the redefinition of the term “science.”
Because we've entered an era where all pretense towards previously sacrosanct doctrines about the scientific method and journalistic integrity have been dropped. We now live in an era of financially, socially and politically motivated advocacy in the sciences and media. Media needs fake science to support their advocacy, to sensationalize it for profit along the way. Politicians need it to grandstand and divide and control. The bureaucratic class profit from it and cottage industries of advocacy are built on taxpayer money to preach, who need evidence to "convince" you they are right. You can't get a government grant unless you disclose in advance that you intend the attempt to support whatever the grantor wants you to prove. You can't get a teaching job unless you take a loyalty oath. You can't keep your teaching job unless you publish, and you can't get published if you don't adhere to the party line.
They get paid to have studies published. So the work is pressured. The administration set goals which are achieved in order to get a raise and tenure. The public votes for this with taxes for public schools and sends their kids there. Everything outside of labs, experimental operations, exhibits, hands on training, stages,and performance in most colleges can be taught outside of college. I would guess that school budgets and tuition would be halved if the excess padding was removed. Lots of Ph.D.s in art and theater would be hardworking house painters or short order cooks.
Same reason the theories of Sigmund Freud gained such widespread acceptance among the coastal elites in the 1950s and '60s.
Pseudo-scientific twaddle that gives moral justification for the self-gratification practices of the powerful elite strata of society will always gain widespread acceptance.