Friends, I am experimenting here with a Substack feature I haven’t used before—”Threads.” The point of a thread is to enable further discussion, among subscribers, of an idea raised in a previous letter. In my recent Letter #30, I described academia as, ideally, a playground for ideas. But near the end I wrote about how our system of schooling destroys the playfulness of academic pursuits for most students, and then I wrote:
“By the time students go on to tertiary schooling their expectations about the nature of ‘education’ are rather well set, as something to endure, not enjoy. And by the time professors become professors all too many have become way too serious in what and how they teach, and the methods in college are not much different from the non-playful methods of primary and secondary schooling…. Moreover, altogether too many who go through this system and become professors never recover the true academic spirit, the spirit of play. They are in it just as a job, to make money, to advance through the system.”
This led reader Antonio to suggest, in the comments, that this attitude—of seeing the academic job as that of advancing through the system—may help account for instances of cheating in science, including the “recent high profile accusations against Dan Ariely, Francesca Gino, Marc Tessier-Lavigne.”
Some years ago I wrote about this topic in two posts on my Psychology Today blog. In one post I presented evidence that the rate of cheating in science is much greater than most believe and argued that it derives from the habit of cheating in school. In the other I described a case that affected me personally, where someone in the lab where I was a graduate student was suspected of cheating and ultimately committed suicide. Here are the links to those post.
I am interested in your thoughts and questions about cheating in science. It is an important issue because science absolutely depends upon honesty. Cheating destroys the entire enterprise. I’m also interested in your experiences and thoughts concerning cheating in schools, as it relates to my argument in the first post I link to here that school is a breeding ground for cheating.
It's been my experience (first as a graduate teaching fellow and then as a professor) that student cheating is triggered by mental/emotional pressure exerted on a student by a high-stakes assessment (i.e., an assignment or test that is a significant part of the grade). Not wanting to receive a failing grade, the student cheats.
Many professors are under a similar amount of pressure due to the publish-or-perish nature of most academic jobs. If one doesn't produce a certain amount of work of a certain level of significance, one's job (and therefore means of providing the basic necessities of life for oneself and, quite likely, one's family as well) is in jeopardy. Thus, particularly if the professor had some success cheating during school, there is a temptation to cheat in one's work, whether that be fudged results or plagiarism (which has received national attention lately).
I found that cheating stopped in my classes when I stopped linking assessment activities to grades (after reading Alfie Kohn's work on the demotivating effect of extrinsic motivation). I allow students to retake quizzes or tests until they are happy with their score, and I don't provide a grade on homework assignments—only feedback to use when going back to redo (polish) the assignment. When I graded assignments, I discovered that the students who easily received a high grade were content to coast and not stretch themselves by improving the assignment, while students who received low grades often got discouraged and gave up trying for the rest of the semester. Now I find that all of my students realize that there is always room to go back and play around some more, growing in the process.
Because I have to put a grade into the system at the end of the class to go on the transcript, I have the students come in at the end of the semester, talk about how the class went, and give themselves a final grade. Interestingly enough, in the years since I switched to this system I have had only one student overrate themself (by one letter grade), while many students have tried to underrate themselves (I then point out factors that they have overlooked in their self-assessment and ask them if they feel they deserve a different grade).
It seems to me that academia could go about the process of hiring and promoting professors in a more holistic and humane fashion than publish-or-perish. I was fortunate enough to land a job where my tenure was based almost entirely on my teaching, so I haven't felt the pressure to churn out sub-par or meaningless research. What I have published or presented, because I WANTED to do it, has generally been very well-received in my field. I think we would see higher-quality research in many fields if we took away the pressure exerted on professors, let them play around as researchers, and only publish if they discover something worth publishing. Or in other words, focus on the quality, not quantity, of research.
In elementary school, I believe cheating is a reaction to the high pressure environment, boring busywork, and feeling that you cannot make mistakes. In alternative settings, where children feel safe to explore and learn from mistakes, cheating wouldn’t even make sense! When there isn’t just one right answer, cheating becomes meaningless.
On the first day of the semester, I always tell my freshmen that there are three types of questions:
1. What is 4+5? This question (assuming base 10) only has one right answer, which makes it rather boring.
2. What two numbers add up to 9? They inevitably name the positive integer pairs, then negative integers, then decimals. It turns out that there is an infinite amount of right answers to the question. There are also definitely wrong answers.
3. WHY do those particular pairs of numbers add up to 9? This is a more complex question that requires much thinking and exploring and often leads to other questions (and may never be 100% completely answered).
Finally, I tell them that they've become accustomed to dealing with the first, boring category because it's really easy to test and measure if someone can provide that one correct answer. In my classroom, however, we will generally be dealing with the other two, more interesting categories. Fortunately, due to the nature of the music theory sequence, I get to have that particular group of students in class every day for two years. By the time they're presenting their capstone project (an analysis of a piece of music of their choice), they've become pretty adept at being able to pose and answer interesting musical questions.
I was in a cognitive psychology phd program and belonged to a research lab. A new student from China arrived a year after myself. Both of us being foreign students in a small lab, we grew close. One day, I reached into the scrap recycle paper bin to get some paper. I noticed the sheets I picked up was text print out of my take home essay test I just completed couple of days ago. I looked closer and saw Chinese translations penciled in. Back then we all shared the lab computers to do our work and didn’t have separate logins. She had gone in and printed out my work and copied whole chunks into her test.
I reported it right away and I was fine and she didn’t get expelled. But it turned out she was taking computer classes rather than psychology classes with the grant money from the lab and as soon as she found a better school to transfer she was gone. “Because I can make more money with a masters in computer science” she said.
In her mind, everything was a means to an end. She didn’t have great GRE scores so she couldn’t go directly to the program of her choice. So she just applied to our lab feigning interest so she could leave China, get her tuition paid and a stipend. She was struggling with the class, no problem just copy it from a lab mate. Too bad she got caught but she was already applying to other schools closer to her sister who was also in graduate school.
Her ultimate goal is to live in the US and have a high paying job to support her family. Everything is just a stepping stone. She seemed so friendly and innocent. But there was nothing naive about her.
I was in the lab because I actually liked the research and I wanted a place and lab mates to discuss the nitty gritty of the research. I was left feeling used and manipulated.
I also left graduate school after another year. Primarily because health issues of my husband. But the deeper reason is because I saw that life of an assistant professor wasn’t just intense discussion with fellow researchers and exchange of ideas leading to hard work collecting data and writing up results and furthering discovery. It was lonely and cut throat with a 7 year deadline to achieve tenure while teaching college classes and keeping your ratings up.
I went in thinking it was going to be so much fun. Hard work long hours but intellectually stimulating. But there was too much of the other stuff that just ruined the fun.
I wish I was born in the age where rich aristocrats sponsored art science and research because it was just wonderful and allowed free rein and time to pursue excellence. I wouldn’t have minded even if I had just been the lowly assistant to a great scholar.
Hey Peter, my comment is about a topic closely related to cheating in schools. As an alternative school leader and educator (and far in my past, as a university professor), I have always supported (not forced) cooperative play. I also see one of my roles as helping group resources, including interests and expertise circulate through the group. With children 5-18, I frequently encounter kids getting angry because someone copied one of their ideas. When I hear someone using language or ideas I've introduced into one of the communities I participate in, I am filled with joy. At this point in my career, my goal is to have as many people as possible making use of my educational ideas and practices. I think this odd fear of being copied in schools is a product of our everyone-for-themselves competitive culture inside and outside of schools.
In grad school I was editor of the school paper. While we published articles worth reading, it wasn't really news.... until one day a classmate confidentially met with me to tell me about a cheating episode the school was trying to cover up. I quietly researched it and published it.
I promptly got called in by a school administrator. I got the sense that he wanted to threaten me with something, but had nothing he could do so with. It was clear that the school was trying to hide something. He slipped up and said something I did not know. I thanked him for the additional info. He looked like he was going to pass out right after I said that.
The accused students graduated like nothing happened.
In grad school (and beyond), I found that there was a broad recognition among the PhD students that academia contains more than its fair share of sociopaths (and "cheating in science" is just one manifestation of this). I'm not convinced that this is due to educational training vs a simple selection pressure. Here's an illustration:
Scientist A is an honest, hardworking scientist pre-tenure. The way to be successful in academia is to bring to light some novel result, so he sets of working on some topic where there is no guarantee of success, and a positive result would certainly guarantee one or more high-profile publications. Let's be generous and say that there is a 10% chance that there really is an interesting novel result to be found, and an 90% chance there isn't. Perhaps this person can cut his losses quickly and move onto a new topic if the first doesn't pan out, but if there are more than 3 unsuccessful projects in a row (>70% chance) he's going to be looking for a different career willingly or unwillingly.
Scientist B is in the same pre-tenure boat, but cares more about recognition and advancement. He is faced with the same situation, but when faced with failure he's much less principled. He may not outright fabricate data, but he may not see anything wrong with doing some "light p-hacking." Now his chances of failure is much closer per novel project is closer to 50% instead of 90%, and if he fails twice in a row, he may loosen his standards even more due to the pressure to publish. If he's willing to fabricate data, the success rate might be higher, but chances of getting caught go up as well. Almost 90% of the time, someone like person B will get that high-profile publication in 3 or fewer project attempts (vs 30% for scientist A). Of course, this will not only let scientist B keep his job, but will also allow him to get more grants and rise in prominence compared to scientist A as well.
In my small-sample-size experience, there are many more students like scientist A who start PhD programs. However, at every step of the way from PhD graduation to postdoc to pre-tenure faculty to tenured faculty, the number of these scientists diminish in greater proportion compared to those like scientist B. By the time you get to tenure, scientists like person B may still be a minority but you're likely to have a couple in a department. Because top-tier institutions have even more selection pressure, the proportion of scientists B may also increase. University administration may also have a higher representation of these scientists as well.
Of course it is not quite as simple as this. As I've tried to indicate, there are many academics in the mold of scientist A, and many academic communities have some understanding of what work is likely to stand up to scrutiny. Fabrication of data is universally condemned, but I think there's a general acceptance that "light p-hacking" is an epidemic, and is generally harder to catch, and prove intent (vs sloppiness) if caught, although repeated behavior is typically criticized if noticed. Peer-review is a very imperfect tool for catching bad behavior, and replication efforts are not typically rewarded, so it is easy for someone like scientist B to fly under the radar.
I'll also comment that cheating in courses by undergrads (and MS students) has a different dynamic. In this case, they aren't really doing science but being taught the accepted results of a field and laboratory techniques. Cheating at this level is not so much an issue of scientific integrity but rather the integrity of the degree as a credential. There is probably a connection between cheating at this level and later on in an academic career, but I also think these earlier cheaters are often self-aware enough to not try for a PhD if they would have to cheat to get themselves into a program (which is why I think many starting PhD students actually tend to be like scientist A).
Cheating in an educational environment would be better seen as helping, teaching, scaffolding & learning together. The idea that we can own learning due to assessment expectations has skewed what children naturally want to do - rise up together & help their friends. Science is obviously a different environment as per your links, where the cheating is apparently conducted within the experiment resulting in a different conclusion than should have been found. How devastating that someone died due to this.
Working together as a community on vast world issues & cheating seem to me to occupy different sides of the fence, where on one side the garden grows beautiful, healthy & wild, whilst on the other in stunted, restricted little rows.
In this system, with these methods, is it any wonder whatsoever that competitive gamers have higher standards? See this video I found recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s07rYXmDk_E
Unfortunately, money and industry has a huge influence on cheating in science. Who funds the research, and who stands to profit from the results? I invite you to read this opinion piece by an editor of the British Medical Journal, published in 2022. https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o702
It's been my experience (first as a graduate teaching fellow and then as a professor) that student cheating is triggered by mental/emotional pressure exerted on a student by a high-stakes assessment (i.e., an assignment or test that is a significant part of the grade). Not wanting to receive a failing grade, the student cheats.
Many professors are under a similar amount of pressure due to the publish-or-perish nature of most academic jobs. If one doesn't produce a certain amount of work of a certain level of significance, one's job (and therefore means of providing the basic necessities of life for oneself and, quite likely, one's family as well) is in jeopardy. Thus, particularly if the professor had some success cheating during school, there is a temptation to cheat in one's work, whether that be fudged results or plagiarism (which has received national attention lately).
I found that cheating stopped in my classes when I stopped linking assessment activities to grades (after reading Alfie Kohn's work on the demotivating effect of extrinsic motivation). I allow students to retake quizzes or tests until they are happy with their score, and I don't provide a grade on homework assignments—only feedback to use when going back to redo (polish) the assignment. When I graded assignments, I discovered that the students who easily received a high grade were content to coast and not stretch themselves by improving the assignment, while students who received low grades often got discouraged and gave up trying for the rest of the semester. Now I find that all of my students realize that there is always room to go back and play around some more, growing in the process.
Because I have to put a grade into the system at the end of the class to go on the transcript, I have the students come in at the end of the semester, talk about how the class went, and give themselves a final grade. Interestingly enough, in the years since I switched to this system I have had only one student overrate themself (by one letter grade), while many students have tried to underrate themselves (I then point out factors that they have overlooked in their self-assessment and ask them if they feel they deserve a different grade).
It seems to me that academia could go about the process of hiring and promoting professors in a more holistic and humane fashion than publish-or-perish. I was fortunate enough to land a job where my tenure was based almost entirely on my teaching, so I haven't felt the pressure to churn out sub-par or meaningless research. What I have published or presented, because I WANTED to do it, has generally been very well-received in my field. I think we would see higher-quality research in many fields if we took away the pressure exerted on professors, let them play around as researchers, and only publish if they discover something worth publishing. Or in other words, focus on the quality, not quantity, of research.
In elementary school, I believe cheating is a reaction to the high pressure environment, boring busywork, and feeling that you cannot make mistakes. In alternative settings, where children feel safe to explore and learn from mistakes, cheating wouldn’t even make sense! When there isn’t just one right answer, cheating becomes meaningless.
On the first day of the semester, I always tell my freshmen that there are three types of questions:
1. What is 4+5? This question (assuming base 10) only has one right answer, which makes it rather boring.
2. What two numbers add up to 9? They inevitably name the positive integer pairs, then negative integers, then decimals. It turns out that there is an infinite amount of right answers to the question. There are also definitely wrong answers.
3. WHY do those particular pairs of numbers add up to 9? This is a more complex question that requires much thinking and exploring and often leads to other questions (and may never be 100% completely answered).
Finally, I tell them that they've become accustomed to dealing with the first, boring category because it's really easy to test and measure if someone can provide that one correct answer. In my classroom, however, we will generally be dealing with the other two, more interesting categories. Fortunately, due to the nature of the music theory sequence, I get to have that particular group of students in class every day for two years. By the time they're presenting their capstone project (an analysis of a piece of music of their choice), they've become pretty adept at being able to pose and answer interesting musical questions.
Nice! I majored in music and I loved playing around with the mathematical aspects.
I was in a cognitive psychology phd program and belonged to a research lab. A new student from China arrived a year after myself. Both of us being foreign students in a small lab, we grew close. One day, I reached into the scrap recycle paper bin to get some paper. I noticed the sheets I picked up was text print out of my take home essay test I just completed couple of days ago. I looked closer and saw Chinese translations penciled in. Back then we all shared the lab computers to do our work and didn’t have separate logins. She had gone in and printed out my work and copied whole chunks into her test.
I reported it right away and I was fine and she didn’t get expelled. But it turned out she was taking computer classes rather than psychology classes with the grant money from the lab and as soon as she found a better school to transfer she was gone. “Because I can make more money with a masters in computer science” she said.
In her mind, everything was a means to an end. She didn’t have great GRE scores so she couldn’t go directly to the program of her choice. So she just applied to our lab feigning interest so she could leave China, get her tuition paid and a stipend. She was struggling with the class, no problem just copy it from a lab mate. Too bad she got caught but she was already applying to other schools closer to her sister who was also in graduate school.
Her ultimate goal is to live in the US and have a high paying job to support her family. Everything is just a stepping stone. She seemed so friendly and innocent. But there was nothing naive about her.
I was in the lab because I actually liked the research and I wanted a place and lab mates to discuss the nitty gritty of the research. I was left feeling used and manipulated.
I also left graduate school after another year. Primarily because health issues of my husband. But the deeper reason is because I saw that life of an assistant professor wasn’t just intense discussion with fellow researchers and exchange of ideas leading to hard work collecting data and writing up results and furthering discovery. It was lonely and cut throat with a 7 year deadline to achieve tenure while teaching college classes and keeping your ratings up.
I went in thinking it was going to be so much fun. Hard work long hours but intellectually stimulating. But there was too much of the other stuff that just ruined the fun.
I wish I was born in the age where rich aristocrats sponsored art science and research because it was just wonderful and allowed free rein and time to pursue excellence. I wouldn’t have minded even if I had just been the lowly assistant to a great scholar.
Hey Peter, my comment is about a topic closely related to cheating in schools. As an alternative school leader and educator (and far in my past, as a university professor), I have always supported (not forced) cooperative play. I also see one of my roles as helping group resources, including interests and expertise circulate through the group. With children 5-18, I frequently encounter kids getting angry because someone copied one of their ideas. When I hear someone using language or ideas I've introduced into one of the communities I participate in, I am filled with joy. At this point in my career, my goal is to have as many people as possible making use of my educational ideas and practices. I think this odd fear of being copied in schools is a product of our everyone-for-themselves competitive culture inside and outside of schools.
In grad school I was editor of the school paper. While we published articles worth reading, it wasn't really news.... until one day a classmate confidentially met with me to tell me about a cheating episode the school was trying to cover up. I quietly researched it and published it.
I promptly got called in by a school administrator. I got the sense that he wanted to threaten me with something, but had nothing he could do so with. It was clear that the school was trying to hide something. He slipped up and said something I did not know. I thanked him for the additional info. He looked like he was going to pass out right after I said that.
The accused students graduated like nothing happened.
In grad school (and beyond), I found that there was a broad recognition among the PhD students that academia contains more than its fair share of sociopaths (and "cheating in science" is just one manifestation of this). I'm not convinced that this is due to educational training vs a simple selection pressure. Here's an illustration:
Scientist A is an honest, hardworking scientist pre-tenure. The way to be successful in academia is to bring to light some novel result, so he sets of working on some topic where there is no guarantee of success, and a positive result would certainly guarantee one or more high-profile publications. Let's be generous and say that there is a 10% chance that there really is an interesting novel result to be found, and an 90% chance there isn't. Perhaps this person can cut his losses quickly and move onto a new topic if the first doesn't pan out, but if there are more than 3 unsuccessful projects in a row (>70% chance) he's going to be looking for a different career willingly or unwillingly.
Scientist B is in the same pre-tenure boat, but cares more about recognition and advancement. He is faced with the same situation, but when faced with failure he's much less principled. He may not outright fabricate data, but he may not see anything wrong with doing some "light p-hacking." Now his chances of failure is much closer per novel project is closer to 50% instead of 90%, and if he fails twice in a row, he may loosen his standards even more due to the pressure to publish. If he's willing to fabricate data, the success rate might be higher, but chances of getting caught go up as well. Almost 90% of the time, someone like person B will get that high-profile publication in 3 or fewer project attempts (vs 30% for scientist A). Of course, this will not only let scientist B keep his job, but will also allow him to get more grants and rise in prominence compared to scientist A as well.
In my small-sample-size experience, there are many more students like scientist A who start PhD programs. However, at every step of the way from PhD graduation to postdoc to pre-tenure faculty to tenured faculty, the number of these scientists diminish in greater proportion compared to those like scientist B. By the time you get to tenure, scientists like person B may still be a minority but you're likely to have a couple in a department. Because top-tier institutions have even more selection pressure, the proportion of scientists B may also increase. University administration may also have a higher representation of these scientists as well.
Of course it is not quite as simple as this. As I've tried to indicate, there are many academics in the mold of scientist A, and many academic communities have some understanding of what work is likely to stand up to scrutiny. Fabrication of data is universally condemned, but I think there's a general acceptance that "light p-hacking" is an epidemic, and is generally harder to catch, and prove intent (vs sloppiness) if caught, although repeated behavior is typically criticized if noticed. Peer-review is a very imperfect tool for catching bad behavior, and replication efforts are not typically rewarded, so it is easy for someone like scientist B to fly under the radar.
I'll also comment that cheating in courses by undergrads (and MS students) has a different dynamic. In this case, they aren't really doing science but being taught the accepted results of a field and laboratory techniques. Cheating at this level is not so much an issue of scientific integrity but rather the integrity of the degree as a credential. There is probably a connection between cheating at this level and later on in an academic career, but I also think these earlier cheaters are often self-aware enough to not try for a PhD if they would have to cheat to get themselves into a program (which is why I think many starting PhD students actually tend to be like scientist A).
Cheating in an educational environment would be better seen as helping, teaching, scaffolding & learning together. The idea that we can own learning due to assessment expectations has skewed what children naturally want to do - rise up together & help their friends. Science is obviously a different environment as per your links, where the cheating is apparently conducted within the experiment resulting in a different conclusion than should have been found. How devastating that someone died due to this.
Working together as a community on vast world issues & cheating seem to me to occupy different sides of the fence, where on one side the garden grows beautiful, healthy & wild, whilst on the other in stunted, restricted little rows.
In this system, with these methods, is it any wonder whatsoever that competitive gamers have higher standards? See this video I found recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s07rYXmDk_E
No wonder my children hesitate at joining the "real world"
Unfortunately, money and industry has a huge influence on cheating in science. Who funds the research, and who stands to profit from the results? I invite you to read this opinion piece by an editor of the British Medical Journal, published in 2022. https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o702
Is there a special place we go to engage in the thread, or just comment right here?
You just comment right here.