Academic Dishonesty and Research Misconduct

Helmut KnaustDepartment of Mathematical Sciences

The University of Texas at El Pasohknaust@utep.edu

10/10/2011

• “At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web.

• When confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.”

“Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age” by Trip Gabriel, NYT 8/1/10

• “Helene Hegemann, a German teenager [wrote] a best-selling novel about Berlin club life [that] turned out to include passages lifted from others.

• Instead of offering an abject apology, Ms. Hegemann insisted, “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.”

• A few critics rose to her defense, and the book remained a finalist for a fiction prize (but did not win).“

“Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age” by Trip Gabriel, NYT 8/1/10

Types of Research Misconduct

• Plagiarism/Intellectual theft• Fabrication of research results• Sabotage• Professorial misconduct (grading etc.)

Example 1

• After settling on final grades, a professor re-grades final exams so that there is a bigger gap between passing students and failing students.

Example 2

• Mendel's experimental results have later been the object of considerable dispute.R.A. Fisher analyzed the results of the F2 (second filial) ratio and found them to be implausibly close to the exact ratio of 3 to 1.

(Wikipedia)

Example 3: Jan Hendrik Schön Research: Condensed matter physics and nanotechnology

Ph.D. in Germany 1997, hired by Bell labs.

2001: He announced in Nature that he had produced a transistor on the molecular scale.

2002: Lydia Sohn (Princeton University) noticed that two experiments carried out at very different temperatures had identical noise.

When the editors of Nature pointed this out to Schön, he claimed to have accidentally submitted the same graph twice.

(Wikipedia)

Example 4: Image Fusion

Old method New method

Paper:

Example 4: Image Fusion

Old method New method

My results:

Example 5:

• Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg

Became a Member of German Parliament in 2002 at age 30.

In 2007 he received a doctorate in Law “summa cum laude”.

In 2009 he became Minister of Economics and Technology; later that year he was appointed Minister of Defense.

Example 5: Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg

• The University of Bayreuth has taken back Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's doctorate in law. Earlier in the day, opposition lawmakers grilled him over plagiarism charges during a lengthy session in Berlin.

• German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's alma mater, the University of Bayreuth, on Wednesday revoked his doctorate in law amid allegations his thesis contained numerous plagiarized passages.

Source: dpa 2/23/2011

Example 5:

Safeguards

• Honor Codes– Decrease student dishonesty (usually paired with harsh

penalties)– Professional honor codes?

• Oath of Hippocrates: “I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.”

UTEP honor code?

“Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that.”

Miguel de Cervantes