<p>Hired gun is nothing new. How many ghost writers our presidents and politicians have? This is acceptable why not hired guns in school? Just curious…Never cheated myself. By do have questions about this paper itself. I hate cheater with passion. But what can we do about it?</p>
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As a former “hired gun” speech writer, my view is the difference of context. Student writing assignments are part of the educational process, hence are to be the student’s work. School rules usually “outlaw” students getting someone else (paid or not) to do the work since doing so defeats the purpose of the work. </p>
<p>That said, I personally think part of the educational process should be a course in “practical writing in the professional world,” which not only addresses “do-it-yourself,” but also the need and desirability of formal and informal “ghost writing.” It’s simply not unusual (nor necessarily undesirable) for letters, reports and speeches to be written by one or more “others,” be they secretaries, administrative assistants or hired guns (in-house or contracted). While an excellent education should produce a “competent” writer, it won’t necessarily produce an “excellent” one.</p>
<p>ProxyGC</p>
<p>If you are talking about scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, NO WAY the ghost writers generate content 9and other publications have no significance for academic career). </p>
<p>I’m not saying that there’s no cheating in science, but any results that are not reproducible are questioned, and the cheaters’ careers are over once they are caught. The ghost writer can not come up with the hypothesis, experimental design or results.</p>
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<p>“What I probably don’t understand”? :rolleyes:
Please don’t pretend to lecture an accomplished teacher who is also an excellent writer, and who produces all of it withoout editors. </p>
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<p>Correct. Which is why parents should not be commanded to perform the task at home.</p>
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<p>Factually incorrect. Speak for yourself. Worked for me and all my classmates. If you read my post (doesn’t sound like it), you’ll notice I refer to the workshop atmosphere in the classrooms I attended, which was guidance and practice, not lectures and commands. You’re operating on a model to which I was not referring.</p>
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<p>What exactly is the husband-wife back and stuff, I wonder?</p>
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IMHO, the “we-know-it-all-so-leave-educating-to-us” attitude of academia is the biggest obstacle to learning that today’s students face.</p>
<p>"I abhor cheating, but I strongly believe that treating learning as a competitive sport invites cheating, and that as competition increases, so does cheating. "</p>
<p>The highest competition as far as I know (or one of the highest) is for spots in Medical School. Although there are other unfairness going on, cheating yourself into Medical School is not possible. MCAT participant get fingerprinted at the entrance to exam. They have to sit very still, any unusualy movement during 5 hrs exam could be interpeted as inappropriate or attempt at cheating, you could be escorted out. At the point that one has worked hard to achieve his 3.6+ college GPA and decent MCAT, he is up to writing his own essays if he wants to be in any good standing to discuss them during interview. Interviewers could very easily detect if person is not presenting himself with all honesty. So as competition increases, cheating is not increasisng in most cases as there as so many steps, interview in particular, where cheater will not stand up to the level of other applicants.</p>
<p>Re ghost writing of medical journal articles:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/health/research/05ghost.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/health/research/05ghost.html</a></p>
<p>Excerpt:
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<p>I think we all agree, though, that this is not a good thing, which is why we try to prevent it from happening, and try to catch it when it does. Just because we all think something is bad, however, and try our best to prevent or stop it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.</p>
<p>The issue here is whether what Dante is doing is bad (there seems to be some disagreement) and if it is, what can be done to prevent or stop it (the first easy answers don’t seem to be all that practical).</p>
<p>He is ashamed of himself…or he would have published the article under his real name. He wrote all of those papers and has nothing to show for it…sad little career.</p>
<p>momma-three, I don’t think either of those follows.</p>
<p>Maybe he needs to stay anonymouse because (i) he wants of avoid vigilantes or revenge? (ii) doesn’t he admit in the article that he has lied to his clients about his qualifications? might want to prevent them finding out!</p>
<p>And lots of careers leave you with nothing to show for them, except the money. I really don’t understand this point.</p>
<p>I am very surprised here at people denying that it could go on at ‘elite’ colleges. Every so often you hear about people who faked qualifications to get a medical job, or be a teacher or a professor. Humans just seem predisposed to like confident people, and think of them as competent.</p>
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<p>Pre-meds have been notorious for decades for doing things like sabotaging classmates’ experiments to improve their own standing.</p>
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4thfloor, is the issue Dante… or his customers?</p>
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He works for an essay mill. Perhaps he just isn’t ready to be fired by his employer. ;)</p>
<p>Why does anyone care? Well, in the case of admissions essays or getting into grad school, the person who cheated might have higher grades then someone who honestly worked through the work. More importantly, it also means we are graduating kids who basically can’t do basic work.</p>
<p>The other thing to keep in mind is that what this guy is writing about is a lot more relevant to majors in ‘soft subjects’ where a lot of writing is required, as opposed to let’s say computer science that is based in computer theory (though want to talk about cheating, but that is another story).</p>
<p>And yes, it goes on at all levels and it is nothing new. A cousin of mine went to Dartmouth eons ago, and made some pretty good money writing terms papers for the rich and lazy/dumb types and it continues on. </p>
<p>Add to that now the flood of kids from overseas, many of whom have a hard time with the language, and it doesn’t surprise me. Plus, to be honest, given the nature of the education systems in many places overseas, I suspect the kind of cheating we are talking about is not isolated to US colleges, given the incredible competition to get into good schools all along the road, and then into a top notch college (where in some countries where you go to school sets your future, which is not true (yet) in the US) it wouldn’t surprise me, and from what the more then a few acquaintances I have who grew up in those places, cheating like this is pretty common. When everything comes down to grades, when everything is achieving not at a good level, but hyperlevel, cheating happens, and in that what this article is talking about rings true.</p>
<p>That said, I think it is also unfair to a lot of students out there to argue this is so widespread all kids are involved. Not saying students are angels, the 61% who admit cheating may have done so, but how often? Do they do it routinely, or for example did they as a cs student used someone’s else program to use for an assignment they needed to get in? While I suspect that a lot of kids have cheated one time or the other, at all levels of schools, I think that it is a relatively small percentage who cheat a lot or all the time.</p>
<p>It also raises an interesting question, and that is if someone is writing a thesis on let’s say psychology and they have done the research and written a paper, and had someone fix the language, is that really cheating? If they are expressing their own ideas, their own research, and simply had someone make it more readable, should that be considered cheating? After all, is this a class in creative writing, or a major topic area? While I am all in favor of someone being able to write clear prose, and obviously it will be important going down the road for most people, is having someone else help with the writing itself really cheating in this context? (I am asking that hypothetically, not answering it). </p>
<p>As far as kids getting into ivies and top LAC’s “not needing to cheat” because they are all ‘so bright’ is making an assumption that people who cheat are stupid or unable to do the work, and that isn’t the case. When you are in one of those schools, most of the kids there deserve to be there, they have earned their way in, and can do the work. But for example,someone whose native language is not English, or someone who has a hard time writing decent prose, faced with the pressure and competition of such places, may feel like the only way to keep their GPA up is to cheat in terms of things requiring writing.</p>
<p>Given the incredible hype out there about how if you don’t go to the right schools, etc your life is finished, it wouldn’t surprise me if cheating has gotten worse. That kind of perception, real or not, can lead to the kind of desperation where someone will cheat, and this is true now in the US as it has been in other places for years. When you look at the world we have created for our kids, the hyper load on high school students, kids obsessing about GPA in middle school, the whole culture of gloom and doom that if you don’t graduate with a 4.0 and a 2400 SAT you are doomed to work at Walmart, it shouldn’t surprise us that cheating is out there; when kids are being told that mistakes are deadly, that trying something and finding out they aren’t good at it, are going to doom themselves, what do we expect? Struggle in a writing course, and the answer is to do anything to get a good grade <em>shrug</em>.</p>
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<p>Or some kid with a lot of money who’d rather go to parties on the weekends than write papers. Just because someone COULD write a decent paper doesn’t mean they’ll choose to, if they have other options.</p>
<p>Naturally-agreed, that type exists as well, the lazy student, especially among the well off ones, that is nothing new.</p>
<p>As far as the writer being anonymous, he is doing so, not out of shame, but out of protecting himself. Sorry, mom, but if his name was published, he could potentially be open to anything from lawsuits from colleges if they believe he wrote papers submitted there, could potentially face criminal charges (if some state has a law that bans that), or have his tail dragged in front of Congress as well…not to mention his employer wouldn’t be pleased, either, to bring this to light (ever wonder why corporate whistleblowers are interviewed anonymously?)</p>
<p>Nothing ever gets done unless there’s a Political Reason.
This does go much further than private tutors…</p>
<p>^^^
[Behavioral</a> economist Dan Ariely’s TED talk](<a href=“http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html]Behavioral”>http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html) offers a good bit of useful insight regarding cheating, with intriguing details of several experiments conducted in the wake of Enron.</p>
<p>I used to work as a freelance science writer, and the temptation to work for paper mills was enormous.</p>
<p>Whenever I was scouring the Internet for new assignments, the majority of opportunities I would see were for freelance work for companies that write academic papers for students. I had to wade through the mass of soliciations from these companies to find legitimate work.</p>
<p>There is a huge industry out there (and no, I never worked for it).</p>