Just off the top of my head, studies with more authors also have more people who might notice errors in a study and do something about it. It could be that that studies with more authors are at greater risk of having errors detected.

Hypotheses:
(1)Kaplan-Meier plots of the retraction rate would show more early retractions with “many” authors compared to “few” authors. (non-proportional hazards)
(2) The retraction rate for both groups (few and many authors) will tend to converge to the same proportion over time.

Despite that, if I have to choose, I’m putting my vote in the “bad science reporting” category. The number of fraud cases in the US compared to the rest of the world is only a small part of the paper, and not even the most interesting part. And yet it gets the headline.

Perhaps, perhaps not. It depends on which data are presented in a transformed way. If they present all the raw data, then you are correct, if not, then you are not necessarily correct. I’d love to hear your argument.

Doesn’t really matter anyway. Regular use of proprietary numerical software is the same as regular use of proprietary lab bench machinery or methods.

Suddenly there were all these expert wannabes who didn’t understand the physics of X-ray diffraction who were making fantastic claims based on well-known artifacts

Like claiming to have found weak superstructure peaks that were actually W La contamination peaks?