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Psst!
Wanna get a good score on the SAT? Forget studying - the (criminally)
smart way is to buy the perfect score.
Here's the story by Alison Stewart at 60 Minutes of how one really smart guy named Sam Eshaghoff ran a criminal enterprise of taking tests for profit (an academic gun for hire, if you will), and how he got caught:
Eshaghoff: As soon as I took that first test, and I went in and I killed it, like my first time ever taking the test for somebody else, I got a perfect score on the math section. It was like, "Whoa, that was easy and that was great. And I'm good at this."
It was clockwork from there. Over the course of nearly three years, he took the SAT over and over again, consistently scoring in the 97th percentile or higher for the students he called his "clients."
Eshaghoff: I mean my track record speaks for itself. Like if you know somebody's so stellar at doing something so flawlessly, without one exception it goes without saying: that's a reliable service.
Stewart: Were you invested at all in the score you would get?
Eshaghoff: Oh yeah, absolutely. Just like any other business person, you wanna have a good track record, right? And essentially like my whole clientele were based on word of mouth and like a referral system. So as soon as I, like, as soon as I saved one kid's life...
Caught
cheating? In my days, that's an automatic fail.
But not anymore, at least not in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada! Teachers there are forbidden to fail a student caught cheating:
The school board had defended the policy change, on grounds that cheating students could still be disciplined — including a suspension from school — and that a failing grade did not resolve whether the student had actually learned an assignment.
But critics said the policy helped coddle students, and gave a signal that cheating does not have serious consequences.
An article at The New Inquiry is a conversation between a college-level philosophy teacher and a person who writes college papers for money. Much of it concerns the prevalence, ease, and mechanics of cheating on papers, whether the work is plagiarized or commissioned. But this explanation of why so many students cheat saddened me:
I think that the system, grading in general, grading as a gold standard of employability, college as the necessary step between high school and employment, all of these things alone aren’t necessarily wrong. But when you get them all together in this network, and college is going to define your future, the grades will determine where you go, one, for a fifth of you, those of you who are going to grad school or law school or med school. For the rest of you, to get that job, you need that paper that says, “Diploma,” which means you need to pass. That’s all that matters.
If the only purpose in going to college is to get a diploma (not knowledge, not an education, and not good grades), then its no wonder students assume that you should get one just for paying the tuition and arranging for the required papers by any means necessary. Link -via TYWKIWDBI, where you can join the discussion.
(Image credit: The “Gold Guys”)
Does an angry and vengeful God make for better people? Apparently so according to a new study by University of Oregon psychologists, who found the link between one’s willingness to cheat and the belief of a benevolent God:
In line with many previous studies, it found no difference between the ethical behavior of believers and nonbelievers. But those who believed in a loving, compassionate God were more likely to cheat than those who believed in an angry, punitive God.
"The take-home message is not whether you believe in God, but what God you believe in," said Azim Shariff, a psychologist at the University of Oregon. Shariff conducted the study with psychologist Ara Norenzayan, who had been his doctoral advisor at the University of British Columbia.
Doesn’t this remind you of the age-old joke of "I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness."
We know that elephants are smart animals, but this particular one is a bit too smart. Graduate student Joshua Plotnik of Emory University recently recorded the result of an elephant intelligence test in which one elephant was caught "cheating."
Robert Krulwich of Krulwich Wonders blog over at NPR explains how: Link | Article about the experiment over at New Scientist
Facebook may let you reconnect with old friends, but for increasingly many, the social network website leads to the breakups of marriages: a staggering 1 in 5 American divorces involve Facebook as evidence of cheating.
A staggering 80 per cent of divorce lawyers have also reported a spike in the number of cases that use social media for evidence of cheating.
Flirty messages and photographs found on Facebook are increasingly being cited as proof of unreasonable behaviour or irreconcilable differences. Many cases revolve around social media users who get back in touch with old flames they hadn’t heard from in many years.
Facebook was by far the biggest offender, with 66 per cent of lawyers citing it as the primary source of evidence in a divorce case. MySpace followed with 15 per cent, Twitter at 5 per cent and other choices lumped together at 14 per cent.
Professor Richard Quinn of the University of Central Florida recently discovered that 200 students in a class of 600 cheated on a test. They got a copy of the publisher’s testbank and studied from it. Now some students are objecting to Quinn’s accusation, arguing that what they did doesn’t constitute cheating. At TechDirt, Mike Masnick writes:
The “cheating” was that students got their hands on the textbook publisher’s “testbank” of questions. Many publishers have a testbank that professors can use as sample test questions. But watching Quinn’s video, it became clear that in accusing his students of “cheating” he was really admitting that he wasn’t actually writing his own tests, but merely pulling questions from a testbank. That struck me as odd — and I wasn’t really sure that what the students did should count as cheating. Taking “sample tests” is a very good way to learn material, and going through a testbank is a good way to practice “sample” questions. It seemed like the bigger issue wasn’t what the students did… but what the professor did.
In looking around, it looks like a lot of the students agree. They’re saying that the real issue is that Prof. Quinn simply copied questions from the publisher, rather than actually recreating his own test, and noting that this seems like a massive double standard. The professor is allowed to just copy questions from others for his tests? In fact, some of the students have put together a video pointing out that, at the beginning of the year, Prof. Quinn claimed that he had written the test questions himself.
Do you agree with this argument?
University of Central Florida business professor Richard Quinn delivered a lecture he hoped he would never have to. He had uncovered indications that many of the class of 600 seniors had cheated on an exam. Quinn said the entire class had to retake the test, and challenged the cheaters to confess, in which case they would not be kicked out of school.
He said: “I don’t want to have to explain to your parents why you didn’t graduate, so I went to the Dean and I made a deal. The deal is you can either wait it out and hope that we don’t identify you, or you can identify yourself to your lab instructor and you can complete the rest of the course and the grade you get in the course is the grade you earned in the course.”
Prof Quinn also added a requirement for those who came forward complete a four hour course in ethics. In return there would be no permanent record of the cheating.
So far more than 200 students have admitted to cheating.
A video of the 15-minute lecture is included with the story. Link -via reddit
There’s no context (or credit) to this image we found over at Arbroath today, so it’s your job, dear Neatoramanauts, to supply the explanation. Funniest explanation wins T-shirt of your choice from the NeatoShop (may we suggest selecting one from the Science and Funny T-shirt categories?). Please remember to write your selection alongside your entry, otherwise you forfeit the prize.
Ready? Set? Go!
Update 11/8/10 – the winner: Women have finally triumphed over the Taliban, so now boys are forced to wear blinders instead of girls wearing burkas! Congrats to Wendy who go the Type Bike T-shirt!
Things sure are different from when I went to school. For one, cheating and schools’ effort to curb it, have gone high-tech:
The frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be here at the testing center of the University of Central Florida.
No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.
The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot.
Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later.
When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.
Taylor Ellis, the associate dean who runs the testing center within the business school at Central Florida, the nation’s third-largest campus by enrollment, said that cheating had dropped significantly, to 14 suspected incidents out of 64,000 exams administered during the spring semester.
Trip Gabriel of The New York Times takes a look at the business of cheating (and catching cheats): Link (Photo: Steve Johnson/NY Times)
Isn’t it easier just to, you know, study for the exam?
Robby Rose of Garland, Texas, was caught padding his catch in a fishing tournament when a one-pound lead weight was found in the small fish he caught. Since the prize in the tournament was a bass boat, he was charged with attempted felony theft.
“We took this case very seriously,” said Rockwall County Criminal District Attorney Kenda Culpepper. “As far as we were concerned, the case was about a $55,000 bass boat, not a ten-pound fish.”
Rose pleaded guilty yesterday to the charge, and received five years probation and 15 days in jail. Even worse — he has to give up his fishing license while on probation.
“Cheating is cheating,” said lead prosecutor Alex Imgrund, “and neither the fishing community, nor this office, will tolerate it.”
The fish pictured is not the fish from the story. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Tim-N-Crystal-Connectic ut Outdoors)
Manolith has a list of fifteen people the editorial team says cheated and faked their way into fame and fortune. Some of them have been in the news in the past few years, but others stretch back into history. Among their choices (to no small degree of disagreement in the comments) is Bill Gates, whom Monolith alleges:
The problem is, Bill Gates was never successful in his attempt to build an operating system back in 1980. He paid a man named Tim Paterson $50,000 for his shaky but working operating system, QDOS, which was a rough clone of an already established OS called CP/M, written by Gary Kildall. Gates polished QDOS into a finished product, renamed it DOS, slapped Microsoft on the disk labels and licensed it to IBM in what would become the start of a very lucrative career for an individual of very mediocre technical talent. The rest is blue-screened history.
Besides being chased by an angry spouse wielding a golf club, adultery now carries another danger: lawyers.
The next time a married man or woman glances your way, you might think twice before acting on impulse and frolicking between satin sheets. The scorned spouse could sue you.
Yes, you read that right. You, the paramour, can get hit with a lawsuit that could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.
They’re known as "alienation of affection" suits, when an "outsider" interferes in a marriage. The suits are allowed in seven states: Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.
The law allowing such legal action dates back to antiquated times when a wife was considered the property of a husband. A broken-hearted hubby could go after his wife’s lover — not with a gun, but with the law.
Wayne Drash of CNN has more on the "alienation of affection" lawsuits: Link
Sure cheating is bad, but when a single exam has the power of controlling your destiny (as China’s "gaokao" or college entrance exam does), the pressure to do well can be too much.
To make sure that people don’t cheat on their exams, the Chinese government has jailed 8 parents and teachers caught in a cheating scheme on charges of stealing state secrets!
The Legal Daily newspaper said the parents began plotting in 2007 because their children’s achievements were "not ideal". One group bribed a teacher to fax them the test paper and paid university students to provide answers, which were transmitted to the children through earpieces. The ruse was discovered when police detected "abnormal radio signals" near the school.
Another man had created an even more elaborate – and expensive – system. He bribed a student to send him the questions using a miniature scanner and hired nine teachers to answer them. He then sent their work back to his son and the other boy. A teacher was also jailed for charging parents to deliver answers to students. The equipment he used failed on the day.
