Alternative, and more likely imo, hypothesis is that attaining and maintaining the social (and probably $$$) capital of being a "Harvard Expert" leads to desperation and breaking the rules.
But a priori, you'd expect someone studying honesty* to personally care about honesty, and thus to be less likely to give in to these sorts of pressures. That's the thing that needs to be explained; the "man bites dog" aspect.
* EDIT s/honestly/honesty/g;
I'm not so sure you can automatically assume this. You can definitely assume that the subject interests them.
But it's also possible that someone studying honesty/dishonesty might start seeing the subject in academic/technical terms instead of moral terms. Which may give them much less of a disincentive to be dishonest than the average person.
Which is to say that repeated studying and analysis of instances where people are dishonest may break down the gut reaction people have to being dishonest.
You give an alternate explanation, but it's still an explanation; one which wouldn't be needed (and indeed wouldn't apply) to a chemistry researcher.
A variation on your explanation might be: Dishonesty researchers discover just how easy it is for dishonest people to cheat the system, and how little consequence there is, and so is more tempted to be dishonest.
But then, why study honesty if you already know what it is?
For me, this sort of thing - an honesty expert - is in the same realm as 'ethics panels'.
These folk are there to abuse edge case arguments (think "trolley problem") in order to provide moral cover for corporations to act dishonestly, unethically. And they will provide documentation in support. CEOs will just do what they wanted, but call it "moral" tm.
People using their skills dishonestly is the theme of the story
The headline is just making fun of theory and practice. If some is a murder expert, is that some one who understands murder or someone highly qualified to kill people?
Therefore, the title is about a "dishonesty expert" matching the practice, not about a "honesty expert", which could be replaced by any other field.
Surely not marketing and sales!