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It's shocking to me how badly the data was falsified. You'd think a researcher who is A. well versed in statistics and B. has seen a lot of actual research data would be able to produce more believable data. Does this mean we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg? how many papers are based on hard to detect falsifications?

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Why bother? Low effort data falsification is enough to land a high-ranking paper. Sure, really simulating data with some noise would be much more convincing but its just not necessary. Raw data is very rarely inspected during peer review, much less so after publication, and most reviewers do not address statistics — if they do, the usually refer to their pet model and/or use the same incorrect tools as most psychologists.

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