[tips] RE: Data Fabrication

[Marie Helweg-Larsen]

I've also found it effective to give specific examples of plagiarism/data fabrication and what has happened to the specific student (I've served on the disciplinary board so I have lots of examples). I also spend time more broadly discussing why cheating/plagiarism can not only ruin your own academic career but really undermine the fabric of society (who wants to have the brain surgeon who cheated on her exams?). So I use a combination of oversight (tell them that you can tell through statistical analysis of their data whether they were fabricated), threat (horrible consequences will occur if you cheat/plagiarize) and encouragement to act appropriately ("you are not that kind of person"). Marie PS My students must hand in ALL the articles cited (whether in our library or not). This also helps if students make unusual/inaccurate/sloppy claims - you have the article right there to check if the results really showed that. Stuart McKelvie wrote: Robert Flint wrote: We require students to conduct small (Research Methods, about 50 participants minimum) and larger (Senior Seminar Capstone, about 100 participants minimum) research projects for the major. In recent conversations with some of our better students, it was "revealed" that making up data is a more common occurance than we had expected. Have others found this to be a frequent event? What have you found to be effective means that discourage/deter students from this activity? Dear Robert, We had a bad case of this many years ago. Here is what we now do for our honours dissertation project: 1. When submitting the final report, also hand in all data sheets completed by individual participants. This includes the consent forms. 2. Hand in copies of articles not available in our library. 3. And of course all students have been familiar in a number of courses with our famous long handout on academic honesty. Sincerely, Stuart ______________________________________________ Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Bishop's University, Route 108 East, Borough of Lennoxville, Sherbrooke, Québec J1M 1Z7, Canada. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (819)822-9600, Extension 2402 Fax: (819)822-9660 Bishop's Psychology Department Web Page: http/:www.ubishops.ca/ccc/dev/soc/psy __________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: ROBERT [EMAIL PROTECTED]@MATHSCIENCE [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english -- ********************************************* Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Dickinson College, P.O. Box 1773 Carlisle, PA 17013 Office: (717) 245-1562, Fax: (717) 245-1971 Webpage: www.dickinson.edu/~helwegm ********************************************* --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english