As someone who just submitted an article for review I am gobsmacked by how brazenly the authors have done this. The absolute disregard for integrity and the knowledge production process is astounding. But also the balls to just submit a paper like this without fear of the consequences says something more profound about the state of academia.
I recently watched an interview with an academic woman who trolled the academia with completely wrong things in his papers, and yet it was approved. Academics, and scientific data is not so objective as it may seem from the outside.