I expect that in my lifetime there will be (or already has been) an imposter that gets a leg up on someone in this way and pulls it off- “no, I wrote the article first, they stole it from me and published it. Here are my drafts which predate their submission. Fire them, not me.”
As the imposter this is a really dangerous gambit, though. If it succeeds, and that person stops doing academic work, who does the imposter plagiarize from?
Success predicts success. Maybe it works out: you get funding, you're regarded as a smart scientist etc, so your work is judged with that in mind.
Especially in those parts of social sciences that are very essay-heavy and don't deal with disprovable claims and experiments, the difference between "that's total nonsense" and "another intelligent contribution by a fellow scholar" might be mostly knowing the author.
They could transition into postmodern studies and use the Postmodern Generator [1] to get their new stuff.
I suppose they would have to find someone else to plagiarize if they wanted to continue their con. I don’t think an impostor would set out to do this, they would prepare it as a backup plan in case they were discovered. At that point it’s dangerous, but the alternative is to give up and confess. That would make it seem like a worthy last ditch effort. Maybe if they pull it off they aren’t interested in sustaining the con long term, but rather just enough to solidify their gains and move on to something else.
