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I'm wondering if the loyalty really is with the cheater, or if they are instead trying to protect weaker parties like the students and post-docs that can be lar
by SiempreViernes 3y ago
I'm wondering if the loyalty really is with the cheater, or if they are instead trying to protect weaker parties like the students and post-docs that can be largely or event entirely innocent. The latter option is possible and hard to discern from the outside.
- neilv 3y agoYes, and some academics have altruistic hearts of gold. (I used to assume they were all like that, and that was half the reason I wanted to be a professor, thinking of the university as a testbed or incubator for a better world.) As an exercise to flesh out the space of possible reasons for behavior that seems misaligned with academic ideals, you can also imagine different characteristics and profiles of some hypothetical academics: selfish self-interest and a touch of ethical flexibility (that might've given them an edge to get to the position of influence), arrogance (from the position or other reasons), personal relationships (these are colleagues, often friends, sometimes more), group solidarity, normal human biases, funding politics, being beholden to organizations that are cynical or misaligned with what a good academic would do.