No. That's what they SAID they did. There was no independant investigative body policing them, and there still isn't. They could just have easily have searched the evidence for patterns, then invented the theory to explain them, then pretend to 'discover' the patterns.
99% of genetic research is now conducted behind the closed doors of international drug companies and corporations with a vested interest in the 'management' of illness, disease, and reproduction (along ethnic lines...), and military applications.
The only "intellectual dishonesty" going on here, has been the hysterical attack against Christianity over the last hundred years in the name of 'science'.
A scientific theory *would* be strengthened if this was how scientific 'advancement' was actually accomplished in the real world. However it is now obvious that scientists are as corrupt a bunch of liars as politicians and every other 'professional' body of criminals.
Science actually 'progresses' along a far different and more sinister model: there are paradigm shifts that occur somewhat like the 'fight or flight' instabilities in lower animals. In between such paradigm shifts, which can only be adequately modelled by Catastrophe Theory, scientists act like religious bigots, persecuting and excommunicating all who refuse to worship the status quo: satan.