<p>When I was in grad school in a university town, there was a wealthy doctor’s wife who basically subcontracted her doctoral dissertation out to a bunch of different people. She hired 2-3 people to collect her data, a few more to input and format her data, a few more to analyze it and a couple more to write up her results. She apparently convinced each team that she had done or planned on doing all the rest of it herself, but there was some compelling reason she couldn’t complete that particular step. She was also very careful to hire people from different departments (not hers) who didn’t know one another. She paid well enough that the participants were apparently willing to overlook their doubts and suspicions. I suspect that there are probably a lot of these types of situations out there – and these days it would be easier than ever. (Hire a local to collect your data, somebody in India to input it, somebody in China to analyze it, ship the whole thing to somebody in PHiladelphia to write it up. ) I imagine that at some point, all of this will come to light when someone wins a dissertation prize (or a Pulitzer) for something that was actually a group project.</p>