I have a friend getting her PhD in neuroscience who constantly told me about absurd things matching your (a) and (b) examples. In her lab, (b) was particularly prevalent--she estimated, based on that experience, that ~90 percent of what is published in neuroscience today would be completely unreproducible because of these statistical factors introduced to &quot;massage&quot; data into a more impressive-looking form. Photoshop was also frequently used to make images appear to show a more profound contrast of control v. experiment. All in all, she became disgusted with the entire department and considered giving up becoming a scientist altogether; and yet, according to my googling, she was at one of the top ten programs in the United States...