I know someone who worked in diesel emissions research during the era of the great VW emissions scam. He explained how demoralizing it was and how it basically shut them down. They couldn't possibly achieve what VW was achieving!
Of course VW wasn't achieving it. All a scam.
Obviously scams have direct impacts - air quality in this case - but also broader ones. It quite likely hurt actual emissions research. If there were businesses that had genuine breakthroughs, they still couldn't compete with VW's fake methods.
Businesses that aren't forced to play by the rules drive out legitimate ones.
Not a particularly novel point, here, but worth making occasionally.
