Would you have any reference of why it matters the number of people doing something for some to engage in something nefarious? I would expect to happen no matter the number of people.
I feel it is more connected to the culture (for example I would expect to happen more in a hierarchical culture than in an egalitarian culture, or more in a believing culture than in a critical culture).
it happens no matter the number of people. but if you create a directive to dump more people into science than the capacity of society to produce scientists, (and there isn't an aggressive system to cull fraudsters) you will wind up with a linear increase of fraud/bad science, and a superlinear negative effect.
Isn't the ratio that is important? You can have a linear increase in good science. And, intuitively, the bad science would be "fragmented" (many clusters of lunatics) so good science would "prevail" at some point. Most things that I follow seem to have progressed a lot in the last 30 years... (as well as the nutcases, but there were many before as well)
We worry about "bad science", but I read a physicist that claimed that the theory of relativity was really accepted and used only when the older generation (which were generally reasonable scientists) died and not before, because they just would not wrap their mind around "something that different". Which I don't think is the way "we" perceive scientific progress (a scientist looking at proofs/logic/building on others/impartial/rational/etc.)
let me give you ONE example. Homme Hellinga (tenured professor at Duke) claimed to have designed a triosephosphate isomerase. his grad student Mary Dwyer (science hero) recognized it was an artefact and called him out on it, got railroaded and i think even sued. after the dust settled, hellinga was merely forced to give up his named seat (he kept tenure and was still getting grants). meanwhile my grad student friend burned three years of his life doing a project based on a different hellinga result.
i have many, many more examples (this one is publically known, so its safe to talk about and i personally know someone who lost years to it), some worse, some not as bad.
here's two more publically known incidents just at duke:
I feel it is more connected to the culture (for example I would expect to happen more in a hierarchical culture than in an egalitarian culture, or more in a believing culture than in a critical culture).