Is it ethical for a Professor to disseminate wrong answers online?

Question

I recently took a class where the Professor created multiple online study guides, on popular student sites, which intentionally contained the wrong answers. He did this because his exams were based heavily on the end of chapter questions in the book. Also, the Professor told us at the start of class using Google to help answer the questions would be useless because all the top results regarding these chapter questions were his wrongly answered guides.

Was this ethical of the Professor to do? The book used in the class contained no answer (or partial answer) keys and no additional student material was provided for the book. I understand he did this in order to force students to read the book and keep them from simply Googling all the answers at the end of the chapter. However, this removed a way for students to verify their answers were correct.

Edit: In response to some of the comments, he was not bluffing. During the course I was unable to answer one of the questions (it turned out to be a misprint in the book) and tried using online resources. The wrong guides were easy to spot, because half the chapter questions involved determining which SQL statements were valid. Some of the guides were simply answered as A, B, C, D, A, B in order down the list. Other were just flat out wrong. Also, as far as the exams went, I shouldn't say they were heavily based on the book. The Professor literally copy and pasted the questions from his instructors manual and didn't bother changing any wording or the answer order.

"However, this removed a way for students to verify their answers were correct." Did it? If the online study materials were not directly affiliated with the text but simply made by other students, how would a student have been able to verify that their answers were correct before your professor's action? Arguably he is trying to drive home the point that you should not lazily seek unreliable sources for this kind of information. (Note that I am not answering "yes" to the question as a whole, just seeking clarification on this part.) — Pete L. Clark, May 07 '15 at 15:11
The part that I don't understand is: the professor seems to be indulging in one practice that I (as a professor) find rather lazy -- namely "his exams were based heavily on the end of chapter questions in the book" -- and then partially offsetting the disadvantages of this in a very labor-intensive (and yes, rather strange) way. Why not just write exam questions which are not spoiled by preexisting internet materials? This is not so hard... — Pete L. Clark, May 07 '15 at 15:15
I would not call that unethical, but I strongly question the pedagogical validity, appropriateness and effectiveness of such unusual approach. — Aleksandr Blekh, May 07 '15 at 15:18
@AleksandrBlekh perhaps not to the class he is teaching given the disclosure, but what about to the general internet populace? I would argue that he is doing a disservice to the community (by willingly posing false information intended to confuse people), which is unethical — user2813274, May 07 '15 at 15:33
Is this an "opinion" question? If so, maybe those answering should reveal if they are professors, students, or neither. — GEdgar, May 07 '15 at 15:50
@user2813274: I tend to agree with you on this - not completely, but significantly. I was under the impression that the posted misleading information gets deleted from Internet after the term. — Aleksandr Blekh, May 07 '15 at 16:24
It's not exactly unethical, I think that you're looking for another word. Possibly "a jerk". — Zibbobz, May 07 '15 at 16:40
@AleksandrBlekh This is not the case, one of the reasons there are so many wrong guides is he creates a new one once a semester, so he says. He has been teaching that specific class for over five years now. — user123, May 07 '15 at 17:11
@user123: Five years worth of wrong information? Unbelievable! — Aleksandr Blekh, May 07 '15 at 17:30
It's also possibly against the TOS for the sites the professor is posting incorrect information on. It might be worth reporting him and seeing if they're willing to take action to ban him from access. Certainly Stack Exchange sites would do that. — R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE, May 08 '15 at 02:32
Well it's ethical for a professor to provide an unclarified answer & of course the formulation will attain neanswer. — , May 08 '15 at 04:41
I consider deliberately distributing wrong information a far bigger offense than say plagiarism. — CodesInChaos, May 08 '15 at 07:54
"literally copy and pasted the questions from his instructors manual and didn't bother changing any wording or the answer order" - isn't that commonly called plagiarism? Isn't that something that one can be sued for copyright infringement for? — , May 08 '15 at 03:56
This isn't an answer so I suspect it will be removed, but until that happens: not necessarily. Plagiarism and copyright infringement are different, but both are somewhat context-dependent. There are cases where copying content is ethical (not plagiarism) and also cases where it is legal (not copyright infringement). There are other questions on this site that address these issues; I'd recommend you search for them. — David Z, May 08 '15 at 07:49
@user123 Do you think it is at least remotely possible that the professor and his supervisor gets (an anonymous) link to this question? — Pavel, May 08 '15 at 13:29
If he just wanted to prevent cheating, he'd use questions that weren't word-for-word from the book. Instead, he intentionally allows it to happen in such a way that he can punish the cheaters with the misinformation. Punishing cheating is more important to him that preventing cheating -- and he doesn't care how many innocent bystanders on the internet he takes down with them. Sounds like he may have a nasty vindictive streak and an axe to grind. — LindaJeanne, May 08 '15 at 14:01
Was this ethical of the Professor to do? [...] this removed a way for students to verify their answers were correct. Not for that reason -- he told you up front about the wrong guides. You don't have some kind of right to easily finding solutions on the internet. But as noted by other posters, the internet at large is unaware that the guides are wrong and his actions are unethical for that reason. — Matthew Read, May 08 '15 at 17:28
I think perhaps you should post his name, let him develop a reputation for having intentionally presented bad information online, and see if he thinks it was worth it. His anonymity is the problem here. — Chris B. Behrens, May 08 '15 at 18:01
@ChrisB.Behrens Even if it is deserved, I don't condone using one breach of ethics to punish another, and neither should you. — Zibbobz, May 08 '15 at 19:12
Wait I'm confused. How could deliberately lying to the entire human race be considered ethical? — geometrian, May 08 '15 at 19:26
I am not bound by a specific code of ethics in this circumstance. And even so, he has no reasonable expectation of privacy in this case, barring a specific agreement with the students or the university. As for a general case of ethics, all I am proposing doing is assigning authorship to work he has produced on the Internet. — Chris B. Behrens, May 08 '15 at 20:00
Would it be ethical if he had anonymously placed erroneous books in the library, because he preferred that you get the source material directly from his lectures? — Chris B. Behrens, May 08 '15 at 20:01
Name names. If what the professor did was ethical, people will surely rally around him/her as a great opponent of cheating. If the professor was acting unethically, the world will jump on him/her and the University might even apply some discipline. Why would you protect the name a professor took that were completely in the open? — Steve Sether, May 08 '15 at 23:26
This raises the question of whether a professor has an ethical obligation to a wider set of people than just their registered students, i.e. internet readers, general public, MOOC students. (And if yes, whether that's a lesser obligation than to the registered students who pay their bill, get them tenure etc.) Most of us here would agree they have, but I wonder if academic codes of conduct (individual universities, AAUP, etc.) have kept up-to-date with explicit policies on this. — smci, May 09 '15 at 00:29
The end goal of education is to have students learn and understand the material such that they can apply it in practice. While I do not condone copying answers, students should be able to use online resources to aid their studies and should be encouraged to discuss the material with others, so long as the answers are original. Disseminating false information is not helpful to students who are trying to learn legitimately, and it interferes with anyone outside the class trying to learn the material on their own. — bwDraco, May 09 '15 at 14:04
(continued) The right way to handle this is to require students, whenever reasonable, to give explanations of their answers in their own words. Students should be asked to demonstrate understanding of the material in their responses. If the rationale for an answer is copied, it receives no credit. What the professor is doing is outright unethical, and I would in fact bring it up to the academic affairs office for investigation. — bwDraco, May 09 '15 at 14:15
(continued) I would reasonably suspect that the professor wants to get revenge on cheating students. He's seeing students as adversaries, not as good-faith learners who want to gain the skills needed for a good career in modern society. This is not how you nurture a learning community. — bwDraco, May 09 '15 at 14:24
Wow. With only one question, user123 moved into the top 5% of users in all of stackexchange this week! — GEdgar, May 09 '15 at 15:19
Is it ethical for anyone to disseminate wrong answers online? — Franck Dernoncourt, May 10 '15 at 21:09
@user2813274 - this is an extremely important point. My daughter had to deal with exactly that in one of her high school classes. (Something in the history/social studies realm.) She had to do some research on a historical figure, and found a web site from a national publisher that listed a bunch of "facts" about that individual. Problem was, they were all false, and it wasn't unless you read the fine print at the bottom that you realized it was part of a different curriculum regarding the notion of "not believing everything you read on the Internet"... — , May 12 '15 at 13:41
@SteveSether I understand why you would want me to, but I'm not going to name and shame. — user123, May 13 '15 at 21:25
This isn't about shame, it's a public act that the professor did that he/she is undoubtedly proud of. The professor doesn't consider it shameful, but normal behavior. There's no secret to keep here, and no confidentiality even implied. — Steve Sether, May 14 '15 at 05:13

Patricia Shanahan · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-08T04:14:22.847

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I have a strong negative opinion on this.

In 2002, I joined a PhD program and was at the same level of computer science education as peers who had recently completed CS degrees at good schools. My last prior formal CS education was a master's degree that I completed in 1975.

I achieved that, as well as staying employable in the computer industry for over 30 years, by continuous independent study. As computer science kept changing around me I felt at times like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Not having answers to the questions in a textbook was something I could handle, though undesirable. If I had found answers on-line that conflicted with my answers I could have wasted a lot of time trying to resolve the discrepancy, including trying to contact the answer author to point out an error.

Wrong answers to questions in a good textbook are particularly destructive. I put a lot of effort into selecting the books I use. In order to progress, it is necessary to attempt exercises that are a stretch. In some cases, it is difficult to check whether an answer is correct. Searching on-line for answers may be the best available resource.

The professor was, intentionally or not, sabotaging independent study.

edited May 08 '15 at 04:14

answered May 07 '15 at 15:32

Patricia Shanahan

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I can't say I disagree with you, and uploading intentionally incorrect things to the internet is surely very close to the bottom of the list of things I would ever do. However, I think maybe you underestimate the peril of independent study from the internet: indeed, how do you know that what you're reading is correct? I think that vetting material -- especially material coming from authors unknown or untrusted -- for correctness is one of the essential skills for (especially independent!) study and becoming more so all the time. (But once more: spreading misinformation seems very bad.) – Pete L. Clark May 07 '15 at 15:50
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@Pete L. Clark Poisoning a well and simply making a well that could get contaminated are 2 different things. When reading decent sources online I accept that people can make mistakes. If knowledgeable people are setting out to poison the information sources in their area in an informed fashion that makes them horrible people. It happens but making the problem worse is a wholly evil endeavor. The professor in question should feel nothing but shame. – Murphy May 07 '15 at 16:00
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@PeteL.Clark I have no issue with teaching to take everything with a grain of salt, but saturating the entire web like this with self-corroborating incorrect information makes it harder to vet. If I post onto StackOverflow that 1 + 1 = 3, that's one source, but if I manage to sabotage Wikipedia, Math.SE, and 10 other sources, it starts getting harder to tell that 1 + 1 = 2. – Compass May 07 '15 at 16:01
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@Murphy: I agree. My comment was more on the learner's side: one should not proceed under the assumption that everything academically related that you read on the internet is correct. I use the internet all the time to speed up my learning (and teaching) process. If I open up a document and it has more than one mistake on the first page, I usually discard it and move on to the next one within a few minutes. I recognize that students have a much harder time with this: giving them more than one source to read at a time is often too much. I was just giving advice for the self-learner. – Pete L. Clark May 07 '15 at 16:04
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@Compass: I think 1 + 1 = 3 is a bad example, because it's so general. I think what we're talking about is more like: "The answer to Question 5 on p. 153 of Textbook X is False." Again, I do not approve of this practice in the slightest, but I think it's being compared with a much more insidious one. If a professor tells me that he has changed all the top instances of 1 + 1 = 2 on the internet to 1+ 1 = 3, I will smile and back away slowly: he's clearly delusional. – Pete L. Clark May 07 '15 at 16:09
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@PeteL.Clark Actually, I have a good example I just remembered where a core concept similar to 1 + 1 = 2 was actually transmuted to 3. Java, the programming language. For years,most people assumed and were taught that Java is pass by reference. Turns out, we were all wrong. Obviously, this wasn't a professor trolling us, but a poorly explained concept that snowballed in a bad game of telephone. I thought the former was true for more than a decade. – Compass May 07 '15 at 16:15
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@Compass: or at any rate, you were all using a definition of "pass by reference" that didn't correspond to anything used outside Java. Those who actually cared what "pass by reference" means when used of languages in general, in my experience, always understood Java. Meanwhile, nobody [competently] using Java thought that you could could do int i = 1 + 1; someMethod(i); and then i will have any value other than 2. So you all knew it wasn't the thing everyone else called "pass by reference", you just didn't know that's what they called it :-) – Steve Jessop May 07 '15 at 16:24
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@SteveJessop Not enough coffee to handle this x_x – Compass May 07 '15 at 16:26
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@PeteL.Clark If they chose not to vet their source, that's their own folly - unless the course is on academic research or requires explicit reference to printed material, they shouldn't be faulted for finding accurate information online. – Zibbobz May 07 '15 at 17:08
@PeteL.Clark At some point there are no more books with answers and questions - so if you need any help google (scholar) is one of the very few routes to follow. If my prof clearly states he doesn't want me to search on the internet for answers I would also expect him to pick up the phone during my study time, which is always way out of office hours (too many hours where I have to attend courses). – paul23 May 11 '15 at 14:12
@SteveJessop: Do I understand right, that in Java developers were expecting, you know that i ~can't~ be changed outside of a method, when they stated some thing about "i is passed by reference"? So a whole community didn't know what they were talking about? Or is this just a late april fool? – Zaibis May 12 '15 at 11:18
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@Zaibis: actually, I cheated by using an integer variable to make it absolutely clear that pass-by-reference didn't happen. What many Java developers thought is that objects (rather than integers) in Java are pass-by-reference. Then the difference between passing a object variable by reference and passing an object reference by value is sufficiently unclear and abstruse that most Java programmers got on quite well without knowing the theory or using precise terminology. But they knew that givenObject o = Object();, calling func(o) couldn't have the effect of o = something. – Steve Jessop May 12 '15 at 11:30

score 78 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:49

This "solution" you've presented was brought up in a related question from a while ago.

...Then I went to Yahoo Answers, made a bunch of fake accounts, and posted tantalizingly wrong answers to all of my own HW questions. I have told all subsequent students not to google the HW answers because there are wrong solutions out there.

The consensus at the time was that this is not appropriate, and ultimately impedes the process learning for most of the community for the "benefit" of preventing cheating in your class.

Let's consider the action your professor has taken.

Also, the Professor told us at the start of class using Google to help answer the questions would be useless because all the top results regarding these chapter questions were his wrongly answered guides.

Let's look at the effort spent trying to do this. The professor found the right answers, and then purposely answered them wrong, and published them around the web to "solve" his problem for a relatively "personal" benefit of ensuring academic integrity in his own course, at the expense of every student of that course in the world.

At the very least, it's not helping anyone. At the very most, if he is using his position as a professor (i.e. actually listing his credentials/qualifications) for these study guides, that would raise additional red flags that could potentially be grounds for something that the university might need to be made aware of.

He did this because his exams were based heavily on the end of chapter questions in the book.

In my opinion, he should have instead used his time to write exams that were not so heavily based on end of chapter questions in the book.

To be fair, if someone is posting incorrect content on Yahoo Answers, it's not really like they've gone out of their way to find a pristine well to poison. But it's still poisoning the well, or at least not making it any cleaner. — E.P., May 09 '15 at 10:32

score 63 · Answer 3 · answered May 07 '15 at 16:44

It is massively unethical, because the internet does not exist in a vacuum.

Consider the possibility that someone looking for a valid answer online, because they do not have or cannot afford this textbook, finds your professor's answer and assumes it is correct. Because of his deception, he has misled this and every other person who seeks this answer by knowingly posting the wrong answer himself.

It is also ultimately futile and harmful to the learning process - it discourages students from trying to use all resources available to them, discounts the possibility that the text could be wrong, and gives students a sense that they are being cheated by the professor.

It is unethical, it is detrimental to the learning process, and frankly his disrespect and sabotage of online resources makes him look like a luddite.

Much worse than a luddite. Luddites had goals and ideals, and while you may not approve their methods, at least it's undeniable that they had a point. This doesn't. — o0'., May 08 '15 at 13:50
@Lohoris I disagree personally that all Luddites have a valid point/goal, but I think our difference of opinion here may be...Academic. B) — Zibbobz, May 08 '15 at 13:53

score 13 · Answer 4 · answered May 09 '15 at 10:27

If an academic publishes incorrect information that's an ethical problem. Academics who lie when publishing information about their domain of expertise when it suits them can't be trusted to be honest when they publish scientific papers.

I would look at the ethical guidelines of your university to determine what they have to say about lying and deliberately publishing incorrect information. If those guidelines not only forbid lying in scientific papers but are more broad, forward information about the case to the relevant authority in your university that deals with ethical breaches.

score 4 · Answer 5 · edited May 09 '15 at 02:15

I agree, this is somewhat unethical.

I can understand wanting to discourage just Googling the answers - however, where the unethicality of kicks in is for those people who dont't know that this professor has deliberately poisoned the well and released study guides that are flat out wrong - and pushed those wrong guides high enough in the results lists to be common. Now, not knowing this, a person unrelated to the class in question gets a hold of this guide; they might try to use said guide to try to learn the material in question - only to be using the flat out wrong materials, and not knowing they were deliberately made to be wrong. Depending on the knowledge level of the querier, they might figure out the guide was wrong - but, what if they don't know any better? Since it was pointed out, he deliberately made sure his bogus guides were highly likely to show up as a result.

I also see a problem in the fact it's being pushed up to a global search engine - so, it's spreading misinformation to more than just the class. I mean, if it were just doing Professor X's CS310 class study guides - OK, bad form poisioning those specific key words - but Google sub-parses the documents, so now, other people see these results.

Sounds like he is just too lazy to write up good questions and wants to just cut and paste his Teacher's Edition textbook questions. I just wonder what his teacher/course evaluations are like, and what his supervisors and those higher up the food chain think of his practices and doing this? Maybe it's time (or just after you get his grade) to go to the head of the department and/or the dean of students and figure out what is up and why this is an acceptable practice, and why you feel it's unacceptable and how this kind of inhibits self-learning. Pretty much, come in ready to defend your position. If it's not just you, well, then I would make it more the merrier and show the administration how you feel. Perhaps they aren't aware of exactly what he's doing, and the extent to which he's going about it.

Defend your position, but don't necessarily come off as overly troublesome and trying to make drama - more as concerned about this issue.

user3209815 · Answer 6 · 2015-05-08T08:30:34.270

Well, like everyone he is free to post on the internet anything he wants that is considered legal. Wrong answers are legal from that perspective.

Regardless what he intends to teach/enforce his students, there are likely other people who google similar questions and are mislead by his "trolling" (to use internet jargon). For a professor, who should be teaching and spreading knowledge to people, spreading misinformation to intentionally mislead readers is wrong and unethical.

Furthermore, I guess the book is not very well written, the books I studied, usually had questions which challenge the general understanding of the subject rather than a google-able fact.

In the end, I don't think there is anything you or anyone else can do about him. Even under pressure, the professor can simply post anonymously and don't tell the students up front.

PS I'm really perplexed that someone takes time to systematically alter the perception of some topics on the internet, instead of only adjusting the (exam) questions like every other teacher I know does. This tilting at windmills shows extreme weakness of character in my eyes.

Is it ethical for a Professor to disseminate wrong answers online?

6 Answers6