Academic dishonesty

Academic dishonesty is academic misconduct which violates the principles of academic integrity. For students, this primarily means cheating on a test - pretending you've learned more than you really have. For researchers, this generally refers to intellectual dishonesty, such as knowingly presenting an unsound argument in favor of a proposition for ideological reasons.

Scientists unknowing drift academic dishonesty by incorrectly assuming that a small sample represents the whole (see statistical sampling). Often the pressures of the "publish or perish" syndrome drive scientists to such deliberate acts as:

• faking research to support a theory
• discarding data which contradict a theory
• character assassination of scientists who advance competing theories