Finally, a skeptic might counter that the JPSP authors could have conducted the studies, found results, dismissed inconsistent data, and then written the paper as if those were the results that they had anticipated all along. However, orchestrating such a large-scale hoax would require the coordination and involvement of thousands of researchers, reviewers, and editors. Researchers would have to selectively report those that “worked.” Reviewers and editors would have to selectively accept positive, confirmatory results and reject any norm violating researchers that submitted negative results. The possibility that an entire field could be perpetrating such a scam is so counterintuitive that only a social psychologist could predict it if it were actually true.
My favorite part: