Are we about to discover a new force of nature?

I agree that the title is linkbait. It's a list of known problematic experiments where the result is (slightly) different from the theoretical prediction. I remember most of them, there is nothing new.

The article is too optimistic, but Sabine H. usualy errs in the opositer direction. The truth is in between.

About the muon discrepancy:

I read an article a few years ago that explains that the muon creates virtual pions (everyone agrees with this part) and that we don't know enough about pions so we must aproximate them with experimental values (everyone agrees with this part) and the constants in the aproximation are slightly wrong (this is the polemic part).

I think it makes a lot of sense, but it's far from confirmed. I still hear the X-files music when I think about it, but it's very interesting. (Note that this is not my area, so I may be misremembering things or ignoring obvious problems, but I want to believe.)

About "dishonnest scientists": That's too strong. The paprwork asking money from grants is usually too optimistic (I call it grantbait), but not as optimistic as the press coverage. I think they usualy don't lie, but it's like kickstarter. The mandatory goal are probably going to be fullfil, but the strech goals may be too optimistic.