Yes, I'm very skeptical of Buckman's claim that more fraud will help. Seems similar to a claim around 2015-2016 that voting for Donald Trump will inspire America to clean up its act politically. Institutions aren't biological systems that operate according to mysterious hormetic processes. Institutions are created by humans and thrive or decay based on whether they effectively channel human effort. Be the change you want to see in the world. And if you wreck something, and others apply blood sweat and tears to recreate it in a way that's better than the original, you don't get to take any credit as the wrecker.
I think the overwhelming problem is the amount of trust people have an academia, and especially, in elite academia. A Harvard research paper is trusted. The harm of people trusting fake science is high. I see it every day in my field.
1) If people realize it's more like a Facebook post, that will be better. People will be able to push back.
2) Alternatively, if we clean up this mess, that will be even better. Academia ought to be trustworthy.
I don't see a path to #2 without a lot of dishonest people with tenure being laid off. At elite institutions, most people hired in the past decade or two cheated at least a little bit. I don't see a path to get there without a high-profile scandal.
