The issue is the inherent integrity and value of peer review process, not what TYPE of scientist are involved.
The process isn't perfect or infalible, and nobody here is claiming that it is.
However, it's still the best way to go about it, because the very essence of it is about having
other people review your work. As opposed to writing a paper and simply having everybody accept your findings at face value.
I have no doubt that you can find some that forge papers or shuffle their data in the hope that nobody will notice, just to achieve 5 minutes of fame and glory, or to be able to add another paper publication to the resumé.
And some might get away with it for a certain amount of time. But it doesn't last.
The very fact that you even know about such cases, shows that they are exposed sooner or later.
By none other then peers, reviewing the work.
See, science is a continous "work in progress".
Newton (I think) used to say that "
he was standing on the shoulders of giants".
Meaning that his work was only possible thanks to the work of others that was done before him.
In science, knowledge builds upon knowledge.
Newton came up with Newtonian physics and it worked well.
Einstein then found out that newtonian physics doesn't play well when the mass gets truelly massive or the speed approaches light speed.
So he
expanded on Newton's physics with relativity.
If Newton was a quack, if he forged his data etc... then it would have been exposed by people like Einstein who would try to build upon Newton's work.
This is why the scientific method in combination with peer review is succesfull in what it does, eventhough the process itself isn't "perfect" or "infalible" or "impossible to trick".
Forgeries, hoaxes or simply honest mistakes or inaccuracies, are bound to be exposed sooner or later.
The usual creationist mantra's about piltdown man etc are a fine example.
Creationists didn't expose these hoaxes.
Scientists did.
Peers did.
