Two weeks later, what we received would best be described as gibberish. A few of the papers attempted to mimic APA style, but none achieved it without glaring errors. The citations were sloppy and the reference lists abominable—including outdated and unknown sources, many of which were online news stories, editorial posts, or blogs, and some that were simply broken links. In terms of the quality of the writing itself, the authors of all of the papers seemed to have a tenuous grasp of the English language and the structure of a basic essay. Paragraphs jumped clumsily from one topic to another and often collapsed into list form, counting off various forms of cheating or providing a long stream of examples that were never explained or connected to the thesis of the paper. Of the many literary affronts, we found the following gems:
At that point we were rather relieved, figuring that the day had not yet arrived when students can submit papers from essay mills and get good grades. Moreover, we concluded that if students did try to buy a paper from an essay mill, just like us, they would feel they had wasted their money and wouldn’t try it again.
But the story does not end there. We submitted the essays we purchased to WriteCheck.com, a website that inspects papers for plagiarism, and found that half of the papers we received were largely copied from existing works. We decided to take action and contacted the essay mills to request our money back. Despite the solid proof from WriteCheck.com, the essay mills insisted that they had not plagiarized anything. One company even threatened us with litigation and claimed that they would get in touch with the dean’s office at Duke to alert him to the fact that I had submitted work that was not mine. Needless to say, we never received that refund …
The bottom line? Professors shouldn’t worry too much about essay mills, at least for now. The technological revolution has not yet solved this particular challenge for students, and they still have no other option but to write their own papers (or maybe cheat the old-fashioned way and use a paper from a student who took the class during a previous semester).
But I do worry about the existence of essay mills and the signal that they send to our students—that is, the institutional acceptance of cheating, not only while they are in school but after they graduate.
How to Regain Our Ethical Health?
The idea that dishonesty can be transmitted from person to person via social contagion suggests that we need to take a different approach to curbing dishonesty. In general, we tend to view minor infractions as just that: trivial and inconsequential. Peccadilloes may be relatively insignificant in and of themselves, but when they accumulate within a person, across many people, and in groups, they can send a signal that it’s all right to misbehave on a larger scale. From this perspective, it’s important to realize that the effects of individual transgressions can go beyond a singular dishonest act. Passed from person to person, dishonesty has a slow, creeping, socially erosive effect. As the “virus” mutates and spreads from one person to another, a new, less ethical code of conduct develops. And although it is subtle and gradual, the final outcome can be disastrous. This is the real cost of even minor instances of cheating and the reason we need to be more vigilant in our efforts to curb even small infractions.
So what can we do about it? One hint may lie in the Broken Windows Theory, which was the basis of a 1982
Although the Broken Windows Theory has been difficult to prove or refute, its logic is compelling. It suggests that we should not excuse, overlook, or forgive small crimes, because doing so can make matters worse. This is especially important for those in the spotlight: politicians, public servants, celebrities, and CEOs. It might seem unfair to hold them to higher standards, but if we take seriously the idea that publicly observed behavior has a broader impact on those viewing the behavior, this means that their misbehavior can have greater downstream consequences for society at large. In contrast to this view, it seems that celebrities are too often rewarded with lighter punishments for their crimes than the rest of the population, which might suggest to the public that these crimes and misdemeanors are not all that bad.
THE GOOD NEWS is that we can also take advantage of the positive side of moral contagion by publicizing the individuals who stand up to corruption. For example, Sherron Watkins of Enron, Coleen Rowley of the FBI, and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom are great examples of individuals who stood up to internal misconduct in their own organizations, and in 2002
Acts of honesty are incredibly important for our sense of social morality. And although they are unlikely to make the same sensational news, if we understand social contagion, we must also recognize the importance of publicly promoting outstanding moral acts. With more salient and vivid examples of commendable behavior, we might be able to improve what society views as acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, and ultimately improve our actions.
CHAPTER 9
Collaborative Cheating
If you’ve ever worked in just about any organization, you know that working in teams accounts for a lot of your time. A great deal of economic activity and decision making takes place through collaboration. In fact, the majority
