Cheating is Pervasive

Cheating is Pervasive

The pervasive cheating in America is nothing new. (Drake Bennett, "Bad
sports," Boston Globe, September 23, 2007) David Callahan wrote "The Cheating Culture," wherein he explained how the practice is embedded in scientific research, Ivy league students, lawyers, doctors, and everywhere there are humans. Bennett
focuses on sports which is of minor concern.
If you cannot trust what is published in scientific journals what can you
trust? How many journalists were caught at The New York Times, the Boston Globe
and the Washington Post making it up or plagiarizing? Too many for sure. It is
not just politicians who lie for a living.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

Bad sports
Why people cheat when they don't have to
Boston Globe
By Drake Bennett
September 23, 2007

IT'S BEEN A tough month for fair play in New England.

Three weeks ago, a police prosecutor in Hanover, N.H., announced that he might
bring felony charges against nine students accused of breaking into their high
school to steal advance copies of AP exams. The taping scandal that engulfed the
New England Patriots after their season opener was finally resolved last week,
with no penalties beyond the $750,000 in fines and probable loss of a
first-round draft pick. And the Patriots remain without safety Rodney Harrison,
suspended until Oct. 2 for violating the league's policy on
performance-enhancing drugs.

All of which has left people scratching their heads. Why would smart students
steal a test? Why would the favorites to win the Super Bowl break a rule,
especially when they had already been warned about the behavior? Why, in other
words, do people cheat in situations where there is little to gain - one good
grade, a slight edge in a game - and so much to lose?

This irrationality may be the rule, rather than the exception, when it comes to
cheating, according to a group of scholars who have turned their attention to
the mysteries of the cheating mind. Cheating is often thought of as something
that is done after cold calculation. But, the new research has found, people are
prone to cheat even when it is not in their best interest. Instead of carefully
weighing the costs and benefits of breaking the rules, people can be heavily
swayed by peer pressure, their mood, their image of themselves. Sometimes,
people even cheat out of a sense of fairness.

"A lot of the time people are thinking about the broader costs and benefits, but
there are biases or blind spots or other psychological factors that are actually
driving their behavior," says Maurice Schweitzer, an associate professor at the
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School who studies deception.

The new research into the psychology of cheating comes at a time when others,
largely economists, are finding stark evidence that cheating is a widespread
part of sports, and not merely in the sort of cases that make the news. Using
economics as a forensic tool, they're arguing that foul play, either by referees
or players, is common in sports as varied as figure skating, basketball, and
sumo wrestling.

Whether it's corporate malfeasance, academic dishonesty, tax fraud, or point
shaving, researchers are looking with renewed interest at the motivations behind
breaking the rules - and whether we fully understand what we're doing when we do
it. Cheating has always interested social scientists, but increasingly today
they're trying to find ways around the secrecy and obfuscation that surrounds
cheating, and designing experiments that expose telltale patterns.
[...]

Drake Bennett is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail drbennett@globe.com.