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 unknowingly drift academic dishonesty by incorrectly assuming that a small sample represents the whole (see statistical sampling). The pressures of the "publish or perish" mindset may drive some scientists to such deliberate acts as:

• faking research to support a theory (see "fudging") (see Michael A. Bellesiles, a professor at Emory University who faked gun ownership data in early America to support gun control)
• discarding data which contradict a theory
• character assassination of scientists who advance competing theories
• refusing to make data available for review by interested parties (See Richard Lenski for an example)

See also

• Evolution syndrome

• Professor values