Integrity in Academia

Integrity is crucial in academic line of work: you need to make sure that what you publish is sound, and that you are able to defend any aspect of your work, even the parts that have been developed by your collaborators and co-authors.

It is also very important to objectively and respectfully recognize the source of ideas. Many times you end up re-discovering an existing wheel, though you made the effort “independently” if someone else published or publicly discussed it before you, the “seminal idea” should be awarded to them.

Integrity and fair attribution of contribution may seem obvious moral pillars, however there have been clamorous cases when these pillars have been maliciously ignored, which led to catastrophic consequences for the perpetrators and a tsunami ripple effect to whole line of research. For the possible most epic case, watch this very instructive youtube video by Bobby Broccoli about the man who almost faked his way to a Nobel Prize.