I'm a graduate student in condensed matter experiment, and I'm not at all worried about my future job prospects. Yes, it is very difficult to get one of the ~10 top-ranked tenure track positions that come open every year in a given sub-field, which would require at least one very-intense postdoc (and to some extent a lot of luck). It's somewhat less difficult to get a tenure track position as a second-tier school, and if you're good at teaching there's plenty of opportunities at smaller universities and liberal arts schools. There are however, tons of companies that hire physicists every year, especially ones who specialize in the more applied side of CME (magnetics, semiconductors, devices, etc). That's what I'm interested in, mostly because I would rather not work 60+ hours a week for the next 15 years. Physics is great fun, but it's not the only thing going on in my life.
Outright fraud in physics is astoundingly rare. There's Heinrich Schoen and that's about all I can think of in the last few years. It's not a perfect world -- there are some assholes and also well-meaning people who write papers which are flat-out wrong for one reason or another. However, the vast majority of people who work in the field are honestly trying to do good work. I don't think you have anything in particular to worry about.