Two comments, both just my opinion.
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Both you and @swamidass (cf. Morton’s demon) are recasting this as an influence of religion that creates for me (and maybe a few others) a dilemma that I’ve been calling a humanist dilemma. You are suggesting that a person (Sanford in this case) is suffering from a diminution or disruption of his mind. This disruption is profound enough to cause him to engage in behavior that is otherwise factually indistinguishable from lying. In the kinds of contexts that form the basis of my now dubious attempt to propose standards of error correction and ethics for PS, this is dishonesty and indeed misconduct. To look at these striking departures from fundamental scholarly integrity and say “yeah, well, that’s what religion can do to ya” is, to me, to “defend” the person by reducing their autonomy and ultimately their humanity. It is important to me, but apparently to few others here on the forum, to acknowledge and consider that.
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Whether Sanford’s dishonesty is caused by religious delusion or by a personality disorder or by greed or by anything else, to argue that it isn’t really dishonesty is to play with the definition of a word. My reading of the OED and my experience of the use of the word has led me to conclude that “intent to deceive” is a reasonable factor in the use of the word but that further psychosocial factors are not. For example, I think it’s likely that Sanford and many other purveyors of falsehood are engaging in an attempt to deceive, one that they justify in various ways. I think we are seeing intent to deceive. I don’t care how it’s justified.
Just my thoughts. Probably the last ones for a while.