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Planetoid
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2018
This basically is going to be the place, where I get things off of my chest. It does have a cathartic effect to relieve yourself upon the anonymous internet from time to time. Cheating
After tomorrow's chat in the chatbox, I couldn't help but muse about cheating. Xanaphia introduced me to the story of a book, that cheated its way up the New York Times bestseller list. Which in turn stirred memories about my academic life. A bachelor student of mine used "alternative numbers" to visualize her measured data in graphs. So the graphs seemed to be proof of our thesis... just... that they were fake.
And I am still left wondering - what USE does it have to cheat like this? Mind you - I am not talking about the convenient "day to day cheating" everybody has always done and will always do. Like... being 5 minutes late for work, but your boss didn't notice and you don't write it down on your timesheet. Like... telling your Mom you LOVED her cake when in truth you don't even like cake. Like...you forgot your monthly ticket for the subway and decide to not pay for a day ticket (because you don't want to spend 3 bucks on something that you already paid and just forgot the piece of paper to prove it at home). No no. I'm not talking about those little white lies but about a giant fraud like... cheating your way up to Nr 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Or ruin your academic career by using "alternative numbers" (And here I thought Mr Trump was original and funny with his alternative facts... and then I remembered my student. oO Doh.)
Why? I mean... in case 1 (the book) - even if you had NOT been caught - how could you ever be proud on that? Isn't it something you'd tell EVERYBODY? If I hit Nr1 on a bestseller list... I'd call my parents. My grandparents. My brothers. My aunts and uncles and cousins. I'd have it in my pocket and show it my colleagues. Ah come on, let's be realistic. I'd show it random strangers on the subway. And be like: "DUDE do you know that book? I've written it! That was ME! Wooop a doop doop! Im FAMOUS, man! FAMOUS!" But.. if you CHEATED yourself into that position... what's the point? I imagine myself. My mom calling: "Why didn't you tell me you were a Nr1 bestselling author?" and me: "Yeah, cause the book isn't a bestseller, it's just me having bought 18.000 copies of it." ?????????? What the fuck? Isn't the fun part of getting an achievement... to actually have ACHIEVED something?
Case 2 - my student - what did she think? Well no. I KNOW what she thought. She thought: "I only have 3 months time for the practical work and only 6 weeks to write my bachelor thesis. I NEED something to write about, and since the experiments do NOT show what my mentor suggested we expect, I just make the freaking data LOOK as if the thing my mentor said would happen happened." That's what she thought. Or translated into "sheherazadic": "Im lazy AND a coward. I know better, but... eh. I'll just take the easy way out. Nobody's gonna check anyways, I'll never be caught." Why is it harder to - in her case - come to me and say: "Listen... my data do not show any evidence for our hypothesis. I'm not sure what my data reveals and I don't know how to go on now." than to FAKE your freaking data? I've been known to be a relaxed mentor. My bachelor and master students usually graduated with an "A". I had been known to be approachable. My students were allowed to call me 24/7 if they needed help. Nobody who worked for their title ever failed. Even IF the data were not what - in this case - I had expected... that's the way science IS. You think you understand something, you try it, turns out you were wrong. That's life. That's ok. You can publish that. No problem. In fact, she had found a VERY interesting effect with her original data. She just didn't understand it. Which would have been no problem. I'd have seen it. We could have saved a MONTHS time of me trying to reproduce her data. And I was focused on finding out why HER experiment produced ENTIRELY different data than mine. I tried to get the perfect experiment setup. I tried to change some variables. I tried fresh samples. I tried everything... and didn't even SEE the really cool data i got at first, because I was SO focussed on finding my error and finding out HOW exactly she had gotten those cool numbers. So ultimately... she wasted her time. She wasted my time. She FAILED her degree because of it. And even if she had NOT failed... even if she had been successful with faking her data... I'd never have found this really, really cool biological effect that lead to an actual medical drug being sold nowadays. WHY? There was no "pressure" on her. There was no: "If you don't get the exact data I want you to get you are going to fail your degree!" There was no: "My entire life will be ruined if i don't measure THOSE numbers." No fear. No blackmail. No nothing. I understand students that are under pressure. That have asshole mentors. But... if you have NOTHING to loose... why do you still see the need to cheat? When "my" drug went to clinical testing... i was SO proud. I was SO happy. This was going to HELP people with cervical cancer. If my data had been wrong the entire time... id have to be SO ashamed. So... WHY? Just WHY?
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?