Insecure enough to lie, but too secure to fire?

A common claim by science deniers is that scientists lie to keep their jobs. There’s a premise in that claim: that scientists are working in conditions where they can be easily dismissed. But a lot of scientists are tenured academics, which is supposed to remove the fear of arbitrary dismissals.

I wonder what the overlap is with people who would claim that the tenure system makes it far too hard for a scientist to get fired. I bet the overlap is large, and that they don’t see any contradiction between holding those two positions simultaneously.