Cheating

Cheating generally describes various actions designed to subvert rules in order to obtain unfair advantages. This includes acts of bribery, cronyism and nepotism in any situation where individuals are given preference using inappropriate criteria. The rules infringed may be explicit, or they may be from an unwritten code of conduct based on morality, ethics or custom, making the identification of cheating conduct a potentially subjective process. Cheating can refer specifically to infidelity. Someone who is known for cheating is referred to as a cheat in British English, and a cheater in American English. A person described as a 'cheat' doesn't necessarily cheat all the time, but rather, relies on deceitful tactics to the point of acquiring a reputation for it. Academic cheating is a significantly common occurrence in high schools and colleges in the United States. Statistically, 64% of public high school students admit to serious test cheating. 58% say they have plagiarized. 95% of students admit to some form of cheating. This includes tests, copying homework, and papers. Only 50% of private school students, however, admit to this. The report was made in June 2005 by Rutgers University professor Donald McCabe for The Center for Academic Integrity. The findings were corroborated in part by a Gallup survey. In McCabe's 2001 of 4500 high school students, '74% said they cheated on a test, 72% cheated on a written work, and 97% reported to at least had copied someone's homework or peeked at someone's test. 1/3 reported to have repeatedly cheated.' The new revolution in high-tech digital info contributes enormously to the new wave in cheating: online term-paper mills sell formatted reports on practically any topic; services exist to prepare any kind of homework or take online tests for students, despite the fact that this phenomenon, and these websites, are well known to educators ; MP3 players can hold digitalized notes; graphing calculators store formulas to solve math problems. The Chinese civil service examinations, the main route to career success for literate men in imperial China, was bedeviled for centuries by rampant cheating and examiner-bribery, as detailed in books like the Ming-dynasty Book of Swindles. Cheating in sports is the intentional breaking of rules in order to obtain an advantage over the other teams or players. Sports are governed by both customs and explicit rules regarding acts which are permitted and forbidden at the event and away from it. Forbidden acts frequently include performance-enhancing drug taking (known as 'doping'), using equipment that does not conform to the rules or altering the condition of equipment during play, and deliberate harassment or injury to competitors. High-profile examples of alleged doping cheating include Lance Armstrong's use of steroids in professional cycling - particularly controversial as it is widely suspected that a high percentage of professional cyclists are using prohibited substances - Ben Johnson's disqualification following the 100 metres final at the 1988 Summer Olympics, and admissions of steroid use by former professional baseball players after they have retired, such as José Canseco and Ken Caminiti. A famous sporting scandal involving cheating via harassment and injury occurred in 1994 in figure skating when Tonya Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and her bodyguard Shawn Eckhardt, hired Shane Stant to break Nancy Kerrigan's leg to remove her from the year's competitions and prevent her from competing with Harding. One of the most famous instances of cheating involving a prohibited player action occurred during the 1986 FIFA World Cup quarter-final, when Diego Maradona used his hand to punch the ball into the goal of England goalkeeper Peter Shilton. Using the hand or arm by anyone other than a goalkeeper is illegal according to the rules of association football. Illegally altering the condition of playing equipment is frequently seen in bat sports such as baseball and cricket, which are heavily dependent on equipment condition. For example, in baseball, a pitcher using a doctored baseball (e.g. putting graphite or Vaseline on the baseball), or a batter using a corked bat are some examples of this. Tennis and golf are also no strangers to equipment cheating, with players being accused of using rackets of illegal string tension, or golf clubs of illegal weight, size, or make. Equipment cheating can also occur via the use of external aids in situations where equipment is prohibited - such as in American football via the use of stickum on the hands of receivers, making the ball easier to catch. An example of this is Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, who admitted to regularly & illegally using 'stickum' throughout his career, calling into question the integrity of his receiving records. Athletic cheating is a widespread problem. For example, in professional bodybuilding, cheating is now estimated to be so universal that it is now considered impossible to engage in professional competition without cheating and the use of supposedly banned substances; bodybuilders who refuse to take banned substances now compete in natural bodybuilding leagues. Cheating may also be seen in coaching. One of the most common forms of this is the use of bribery and kickbacks in the player recruitment process.Such practices are widespread all across athletics, and are particularly visible in college sports recruitment. Another common form of cheating in coaching is profiteering in association with gamblers and match fixing (see also the section below on cheating in the gambling industry). The most famous coach of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Runnin' Rebels basketball team, Jerry Tarkanian, was accused of both recruitment fraud and gambling fraud over the course of his career and was the subject of intense NCAA scrutiny. Another form of this involves a team coach or other manager undertaking corporate espionage or another form of prohibited spying in order to obtain details about other teams' strategies and tactics. The 2007 New England Patriots videotaping controversy, in which the New England Patriots were found to have videotaped an opposing team from an unapproved location while trying to obtain defensive signals. As was the Pittsburgh Steelers use of, at the time legal, performance enhancers. However, there was cheating proven by the Denver Broncos during their back to back titles in the late 90's to circumvent the league's salary cap and obtain and retain players that they would otherwise not have been able to. Circumvention of rules governing conduct and procedures of a sport can also be considered cheating. During the 2007 Formula One Season, driver Fernando Alonso was labelled a 'cheat' for exchanging confidential information between the teams of Scuderia Ferrari and Mclaren, a form of collusion.