> unethical researchers could run it on their own work before submitting. It could massively raise the plausibility of fraudulent papers
The real low hanging fruit that this helps with is detecting accidental errors and preventing researchers with legitimate intent from making mistakes.
Research fraud and its detection is always going to be an adversarial process between those trying to commit it and those trying to detect it. Where I see tools like this making a difference against fraud is that it may also make fraud harder to plausibly pass off as errors if the fraudster gets caught. Since the tools can improve over time, I think this increases the risk that research fraud will be detected by tools that didn't exist when the fraud was perpetrated and which will ideally lead to consequences for the fraudster. This risk will hopefully dissuade some researchers from committing fraud.
The real low hanging fruit that this helps with is detecting accidental errors and preventing researchers with legitimate intent from making mistakes.
Research fraud and its detection is always going to be an adversarial process between those trying to commit it and those trying to detect it. Where I see tools like this making a difference against fraud is that it may also make fraud harder to plausibly pass off as errors if the fraudster gets caught. Since the tools can improve over time, I think this increases the risk that research fraud will be detected by tools that didn't exist when the fraud was perpetrated and which will ideally lead to consequences for the fraudster. This risk will hopefully dissuade some researchers from committing fraud.