My work was uplifting people, or so I told myself. Looking back, I suspect that feeling like I was on the right side of history was a kind of moral cover. Maybe I felt less wrong about the p-hacking because I was promoting social justice. The conclusions I drew were what the good guys already believed, after all.
Moral Conviction Excusing Dishonesty
How the sense of serving a righteous cause can psychologically license methodological corner-cutting and self-deception in one's work.