The real problem with cheating

This article by Michael Ruse in the Chronicle (Aug. 23, 2010) talks about why the recent scandal with Harvard's Professor Hauser hurts us all. He says that the particularly painful aspect of Hauser's "scientific misconduct" has to do with "the nature of science. Seventy years ago, the great sociologist Robert K. Merton made a number of points about science, and they seem still to hold today. Above all, he stressed that science is a community activity. Scientists may not always work together, although of course that is now very much the norm, but they do rely on each other, particularly for the ideas and theories that they use in their own research. In turn, they contribute—and want to contribute—to the general pool of knowledge." So unlike the misbehavior that characterizes corporate executives--admittedly bad--instances of academic dishonestly reverberate throughout the community and the shared body of knowledge, in a very pernicious way, or as Ruse notes, "If you fake the ideas or results, and publish them, the poison spreads. We are all now at risk of using phony information, and our own work suffers. The community suffers." Although Ruse talks about "science", the arguments can be reasonably applied to most area of academic endeavor and discourse, I think.  I am particularly susceptible to thinking about these aspects of scholarly communication as I dive into working with students at the beginning of fall term and talk to them about peer-reviewed articles and other supposed indicators of quality and credibility. I now remind them that no system is perfect and they need to keep a bit of healthy scepticism at hand when evaluating any resources.