Yes, my experience with academics is that there are a lot of very dishonest people. They are political bullies who also lie in their research.
Chances of being caught are close to zero (I have contacted many times authors of papers who's work I was unable to replicate - most of the time zero reply, sometimes "yeah it was a honest mistake, oops"), super high competition (only a few tenured positions in all world's high visibility institutions per year), full control over student's future and being able to force them to do fraud (and later blame on them).
Obviously, not all, blah blah - but many academic scientists are the last people that should be doing science.
