The Chronicle

Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: News
Last update: 4/15/08 at 7:01 AM EST

Media Credit: chronicle file photo In the fall semester, new freshmen sign the Duke Community Standard, in which they pledge to uphold integrity in their academic work.

Working within the small physics department, senior Sepehr Sadighpour said he has had minimal encounters, at most, with peers cheating.

"It's not really a problem there," he said. "I've never seen or heard of anyone cheating. It's never even been brought up."

But Sadighpour, like many students interviewed for this article, said he usually only considers offenses like cheating on exams and plagiarism to be academic dishonesty.

Include less recognized infractions like collaborating on homework assignments, however, and the picture changes.

How Duke stacks up

Last year, 26 cases of cheating were brought before the Office of Judicial Affairs, 11 of which were for plagiarism. Of the total cases, only one was dropped.

Although it is the most frequently reported, plagiarism is not necessarily the most prevalent form of cheating, according to a report submitted by the Academic Integrity Council May 24, 2006, titled "Academic Integrity in Undergraduate Life at Duke University: A Report on the 2005-2006 Survey."

That dubious honor goes to unauthorized collaboration, which-at 29 percent-is the most common form of self-reported academic dishonesty at Duke.

The survey compared Duke to "code schools," those with an honor code, and "non-code schools," those without an honor code, in seven different categories of academic dishonesty. In every category, code schools had lower rates of cheating than non-code schools.

Duke performed similarly to code schools in all but two categories. According to the study, Duke students reported a 5 percent higher rate in unauthorized collaboration and nearly double the rate of falsifying lab data.

Among surveyed students from the Pratt School of Engineering, 36 percent admitted to falsifying lab data. But of the students who had completed lab work in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences only 26 percent admitted the same breach.

Approximately 40 percent of upperclassmen in both schools considered the act trivial cheating.

Sophomore Ashleigh Swingler said students might fabricate lab data because they are concerned that they will be assessed on the accuracy of their results.

Continued...

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