Academic Integrity Essay BIO 11
Integrity is a character trait highly valued in nearly every career, job, and personal relationship. However, part of the reason it is valued so highly is because of how difficult a virtue it is to maintain. In few places is integrity more highly valued than in the scientific community. With no integrity, the various fields of science would most likely deteriorate into a culture of corruption, causing skewed experimental results, setback in progress, failure to spread knowledge, and a lapse of the public trust in scientists. The young scientist starting out in his pursuit of higher knowledge almost immediately discovers the difficulty of academic integrity.That difficulty is, simply put, that it is hard work, though the reality of this issue is much more complex. The young scientist finds out almost immediately that cheating on papers and tests can lead to higher grades obtained with less effort. The old scientist may find that cutting corners during experiments or falsifying results to gain a desired conclusion can result in career advancement and monetary gain. People are naturally seekers of the easiest path. All other factors being equal, most people will choose the path of least …show more content…
One classic example is of how stable a bridge is if the engineer who designed it cheated through school. Likewise, how trustworthy are the results of experiments if the scientists involved cheated through college? Failure to follow through with the guidelines established with academic integrity during experiments could produce false results. Not only could this set back scientific progress, as all the resources and time used to conduct that experiment would have to be acquired again, but it could also result in lives lost, especially in the medical