Hugo Gye
The Daily Mail [UK]
14 September 2012
The Harvard cheating scandal which has rocked the world-famous university and cast doubt on more than 100 students began with a minor typing error, it has been revealed.
125 undergraduates are currently being investigated over allegations they collaborated on a take-home exam paper for a course entitled ‘Introduction to Congress’.
And a leaked letter from the professor who uncovered the cheating reveals the similarities between different students’ answers which he believes cannot have been the result of coincidence.
The tell-tale signs included obscure political references, phrases repeated word-for-word, and an extra space inserted into the number ‘22,500’.
Matthew B. Platt, an assistant professor of government, wrote to the university administration on May 14 detailing his plagiarism concerns in a letter recently obtained by the Harvard Crimson.
He initially cast suspicion on 13 of the 279 students taking the ‘Introduction to Congress’ course – but when the university looked in to the allegations, they found 125 possible incidents of cheating…
