In this discussion of Allegra Goodman’s book novel Intuition, Barry wrote, "brilliant people are at least as capable of being dishonest as ordinary people." The novel is loosely based on some scientific fraud scandals from the 1980s, the one of its central characters, a lab director, is portrayed as brilliant and a master of details, but who makes a mistake by brushing aside evidence of fraud by a postdoc in her lab. One might describe the lab director’s behavior as "soft cheating" since, given the context of the novel, she had to have been deluding herself by ignoring the clear evidence of a problem.
Are brilliant scientists less likely to cheat?
Are brilliant scientists less likely to…
Are brilliant scientists less likely to cheat?
In this discussion of Allegra Goodman’s book novel Intuition, Barry wrote, "brilliant people are at least as capable of being dishonest as ordinary people." The novel is loosely based on some scientific fraud scandals from the 1980s, the one of its central characters, a lab director, is portrayed as brilliant and a master of details, but who makes a mistake by brushing aside evidence of fraud by a postdoc in her lab. One might describe the lab director’s behavior as "soft cheating" since, given the context of the novel, she had to have been deluding herself by ignoring the clear evidence of a problem.
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