The Catholic church also punished a few priests you know?
For the
wholesale rape of children. Priests who raped
hundreds of children were punished.
This guy
made up some data. If the general ethics of a system or organization can be judged by what they let you get away with before they slap your wrist, then I have to say the scientific community comes out ahead by that standard.
That he got away with it for so long, and rose to such a place of prominence - that's a black mark on the nation's public university research apparatus, no question. Catching him goes a ways towards correcting the damage but there are going to be thousands of journals out there with his fraudulent work in them.
That's not cool, and that's not the scientific system functioning as it should. We shouldn't be too quick to pat ourselves on the back about this. But comparing scientific fraud to systematic rape of hundreds of children? I don't see how a reasonable person can draw that equivalence.