Harvard Approach to Ethics: Unemployed at Stanford

July 25, 2023

Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.

I attended such lousy schools no one bothered to cheat. No one was motivated. No parents cared. It was a glorious educational romp because the horizons for someone in a small town in the dead center of Illinois was going nowhere. The proof? Visit a small town in Illinois and what do you see? Not much. Think of Cairo, Illinois, as a portent. In the interest of full disclosure, I did sell math and English homework to other students in that intellectual wasteland. Now you know how bad my education was. People bought “knowledge” from me. Go figure.

“You have been cheating,” says the old-fashioned high school teacher. The student who would rise to fame as a brilliant academician and consummate campus politician replies, “No, no, I would never do such a thing.” The student sitting next to this would-be future beacon of proper behavior snarls, “Oh, yes you were. You did not read Aristotle Ethics, so you copied exactly what I wrote in my blue book. You are disgusting. And your suspenders are stupid.”

But in big name schools, cheating apparently is a thing. Competition is keen. The stakes are high. I suppose that’s why an ethic professor at Harvard made some questionable decisions. I thought that somewhat scandalous situation would have motivated big name universities to sweep cheating even farther under the rug.

But no, no, no.

The Stanford student newspaper — presumably written by humanoid students awash with Phil Coffee — wrote “Stanford President Resigns over Manipulated Research, Will Retract at Least Three Papers.” The subtitle is cute; to wit:

Marc Tessier-Lavigne failed to address manipulated papers, fostered unhealthy lab dynamic, Stanford report says

Okay, this respected leader and thought leader for the students who want to grow up to be just like Larry, Sergey, and Peter, among other luminaries, took some liberties with data.

The presumably humanoid-written article reports:

Tessier-Lavigne defended his reputation but acknowledged that issues with his research, first raised in a Daily investigation last autumn, meant that Stanford requires a president “whose leadership is not hampered by such discussions.”

I am confident reputation management firms and a modest convocation of legal eagles will explain this Harvard-echoing matter. With regard to the soon-to-be former president, I really don’t care about him, his allegedly fiddled research, and his tear-inducing explanation which will appear soon.

Here’s what I care about:

Is it any wonder why graduates of Stanford University — plug in your favorite Sillycon Valley wizard who graduated from the prestigious university — finds trust difficult to manifest? I don’t. I am not sure “trust”, excellence, and Stanford are words that can nest comfortably on campus.
Is any academic research reproducible? I know that ballpark estimates suggest that as much as 40 percent of published research may manifest the tiny problem of duplicating the results? Is it time to think about what actions are teaching students what’s okay and what’s not?
Does what I shall call “ethics rot” extend outside of academic institutions? My hunch is that big time universities have had some challenges with data in the past. No one bothered to check too closely. I know that the estimable William James looked for mistakes in the writings of those who disagreed with radical empiricism stuff, but today? Yeah, today.

Net net: Ethical rot, not academic excellence, seems to be a growth business. Now what Stanford graduates’ business have taken ethical short cuts to revenue? I hear crickets.

PS. Is it three, five, or an unknown number of papers with allegedly fakey wakey information? Perhaps the Stanford humanoids writing the article were hallucinating when working with the number of fiddled articles? Let’s ask Bard. Oh, right, a Stanford-infused service. The analogy is an institution as bereft as pathetic Cairo, Illinois. Check out some pictures here.

Stephen E Arnold, July 25, 2023

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.