Publish or perish. The stakes are incredibly high. Cheating may be the difference between keeping and losing your job.

Especially since everyone else is aware of that. If you don't take the risk, you will lose to someone who did and got away with it.

This researcher is in China, where I gather the competition is even fiercer than in the West. I do not know that for a fact, but if it is true it makes it even clearer.

Viewed that way it's not foolish. It's actually mandatory. And it's just going to get more prominent as the AI makes fewer mistakes, and competitors get better at spotting and removing them.