El Pais: Cheating at Brown University. What? US Students Cut Corners?
July 8, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I have a number of newsfeeds allegedly informing me of important “real news.” As you know, I believe everything I read on the Internet. When an item does not appear in one of my newsfeeds, I cannot read it; therefore, I cannot believe. What happens when i stumble by accident across a news story from the land of late dining, I assume I have to treat it as information I should evaluate.
“Professor Denounces Mass AI Fraud on an Exam at Brown University: ‘Academic Integrity Is at Risk’” includes some interesting assertions. Before I comment on Harvard faculty fabricating ethics data in an ethic paper under the name of the head of the ethics department or the president of Stanford University doing the Photoshop thing to spiff up data — I want to point out that corruption, short cuts, criminal-like behavior seems to be flourishing in the US. (The Spanish original is available from El Pais.)
Now what’s this paper from a country that delivered Don Quixote and his penchant for jousting with windmills have to say?
Consider this passage:
Professor Roberto Serrano, who is the Harrison S. Kravis University Professor of Economics at Brown University… has conclusive evidence that at least 50 students cheated on the March midterm exam, making it the biggest known scandal at Brown and in the entire Ivy League…
Hey, hey, hey. Just 50 students?
The article reports:
When he reported the case to high-ranking officials at Brown, he got a cold reaction. The response from the president, he said, was absolute silence. The dean did not comment either until Serrano took the case before the Academic Code Committee. At that point, he received a note acknowledging that what had happened in his classroom was “a wake-up call.”
Well, let’s just hit the snooze alarm, roll, and go back to dreams of academic integrity. Quite factoid: Dr. Serrano is blind. My hunch is that the academics at Brown University have what William James called a “certain blindness.” These brilliant, open-minded people choose not to see what smart software is doing to create stupid people.
Furthermore, the “cold reaction” illustrates the lack of backbone certain administrators manifest when decisive, ethical action is required. Dr. Serrano took action. The final exam was old fashioned. The average score of the in-class test was a revealing 48 score out of a 100. When I was a AI-free stupid student, a 48 was an F at the one horse high school I attended in the US Rust Belt.
The write up from a country that kills bulls for fun includes this statement from the Professor:
“The empirical evidence of fraud is overwhelming,” says the professor, who has decided to make changes for the coming academic year.
Several observations:
- Universities need to focus on students learning, not on using smart software to demonstrate how good software is at fooling professors. Please, keep in mind that some professors use smart software and output non reproducible research and pretend to be ethical.
- Students’ examinations should be old fashioned: Blue books in front of proctors and oral quizzing by a professor and possibly his or her graduate assistant. Too hard. Not my problem. It is the country’s problem. Students who cannot pass can sign up for one of Google’s blue collar labor training programs.
- Faculty and administrators have to establish standards of academic conduct and enforce them. I know that a student’s family can donate several million to an institution. That’s okay. But if the kid cheats punishment is warranted. Figure it out because discipline is the administration’s job.
- Why did I learn about this disgraceful activity at Brown via a newspaper from Spain? Yeah, I know. No news is really good news for some unethical behavior.
Net net: Am I qualified to criticize Brown University? Of course not. But I am a dinobaby, and I recognize a life-threatening cancer when it erupts.
Stephen E. Arnold, July 6, 2026
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