Prosecutors (and juries) already are expected to adjudicate fraud across cases that IMO are much more ambiguous than this.
replyI think it's fair to debate whether it's a good thing that, as I heard it put once, "everything is wire fraud" (i.e. lots of crimes require lying on documents that are sent electronically and thus become federal crimes), but I see zero reason to think that committing academic fraud (which, again, is done for personal gain and causes real, measurable harm to others) is any less of a crime than lots of other things that are prosecuted as wire fraud.
Perhaps we need a new/updated law to cover this kind of thing. This sort of academic fraud should absolutely be criminalized, but I'm not sure I'm the biggest fan of the "everything is wire fraud" approach to achieving that.
replyIf it gets so bad that a society/academic system needs to criminalize such fraud, they have already lost that race.
replyThe only thing that really works is a culture where this rarely if ever happens, because of the peer respect and self-respect of academics.
Do you know a trick to pay my bills in self-respect? Most of my creditors demand I pay in money.
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