Discussion Dishonesty in formal education

[fuyacore]

What is your experience with dishonesty in formal education settings? Does cheating happens more than I expected?

For me, right now I'm trying to finish my degree. I found a roadblock. I can't collect high quality data for a calculation. So I forced to tamper with data and manipulate my results in order to have good enough results.

I'm new to dishonesty in educational settings. How do you feel about it? I feel kind of guilty for it and hurts my perfectionism. But, in order to survive and fight another day, would you justify your action?

It seems many people here in my environment cheats as well.

What do you think?

 

[Hvergelmir]

I'm sure this depends on what education you are doing. Broken systems do exist, and if you truly have to manipulate data to pass, yours is broken.

I'd probably try to bypass the data requirement:
"Good data does not exist, but if it did I would expect it to look like this." I'd then to the calculations required by the course.

If research it's common to work with imperfect data. You can still often count both low and high, and arrive at a span of possibilities.

There's no need to justify anything, or dwell on it. Just do better in the future, when and if possible.

 

[VoidButterfly]

I'd suggest talking to your project supervisor before making up data, made up data is often identified and there's rarely a real good reason with no other option. I dunno what your study is but the fact you can't collect data could itself be interesting.

I knew someone who cheated on his degree, his final year project. Completely faked all results AND plagiarised a website. The uni was kind enough to let him drop out with a certificate of higher education rather than a degree. During my PhD I learned of two cases of cheating, one we exposed in a rebuttal paper and press conference, and one where someone I consider a friend was falling behind so his PhD supervisor put his name on a paper he didn't write. That second one was never found out outside of myself and a few others, but he did drop out in the end.

As a scientist I can say I've never faked data or cheated at all, and I really think if I had to then that'd suggest something else is going on or I've made some mistake.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Have you spoken to tutors as to why your data might not be adding up or, what to do in that situation? I guess that would expose you but, won't they be able to detect cheating? I imagine trying to get advice and help now would be better than falsifying stuff.

I don't think I cheated in educational settings much but, I've witnessed falsifying documents in work settings. Both retail and care work. Forms and forms of checklists to fill in. A limited amount of time to work. Too many tasks for a single person to do in the time. Retributions if targets aren't met (presumably,) leads to people simply making stuff up! I've witnessed others doing it and I've been outright told to do it myself.

If they/ we didn't have to spend a quarter of their time (in part) lying on paperwork- which makes it pointless anyway, maybe they could have actually have done those things! One of the reasons I'm glad I don't work in those industries now. My proof of work is the work itself. No time wasted spent describing what I did all day. Of course, some paperwork and overseing is necessary but, what we have currently often looks ridiculous to me.

 

[misty]

Definitely speak to your tutors about whats happening and ask for help before doing anything like that. Cheating is not worth the risk and could be taken very seriously if caught, people can be expelled over it. Tutors are there to help and im sure they will be understanding!

 

[Apathy79]

I think they're pretty likely to realise the data is fudged unless it's something really obscure for the field. You're better off using what you've got and acknowledging the quality limitation.