In the last year I have seen a flood of stories on plagiarism, and academic misconduct more generally. In the world of journalism, there have been some high-profile cases: Johann Hari, Jonah Lehrer and Fareed Zakaria. In politics, several German politicians have recently been affected, including the Defence Minister.

In Zakaria’s case, it seemes at least plausible that the offence was committed by an assistant, and he signed his name to something without reading carefully. As pointed out by Richard Bradley,

people who seem like they’re doing much more than most of us could do in the same amount of time…probably aren’t really doing it.

There have been a few other recent cases of very “productive” and rather famous academics getting into trouble by overextending themselves, for example  Marc Hauser.  There has even been a case at my own university. Some of these cases involve plagiarism, and others falsifying data. The common thread is an attempt to cut corners and have the rewards without the hard work. Retraction Watch is often a good source of information on such cases.

In the academic sphere there have been some amazing developments in cheating lately: Hyung-In Moon’s attempt at influencing the peer review process is the latest one I know. It seems that the rewards for cheating are overpowering the penalties for being caught. Perhaps we need to work harder on ostracism, and explain to these people that it’s OK not to appear to be superhuman, or in fact better than you really are.