Plagiarism is in the news lately—I’m against it. As @Meaningness1 puts it,
In high school chemistry, Mr. Redacted developed a lab assignment that was a little too complicated for his charges. Completing this lab, instead of lasting the predicted ~3 days, devoured about a month of classtime that was “supposed” to be spent studying for the AP exam. (This didn’t bother me, but the GPA-focused classmates started vocally opposing the lab about a quarter of the way through.)
We were running a series of titrations to find out whether all the flavors of kool-aid packets had the same ratio of ascorbic acid : citric acid. (Each pair of kids got a different flavor.) Deep into week three, frustrated and wanting to get back to cramming for the test, my benchmate said
“Feast, we’re really close. If we just add in a factor of (our) state sales tax, we’ll get the answer we’re supposed to!”
I’m probably lucky I didn’t have a chance to reply. Mr. Redacted heard him, and laughed.
“Adam, being within 5% is already the answer you’re “supposed” to get! If you turn in something perfect in chemistry, I can tell you lied!”
Thank goodness I got that at the tender age of 17. “Report what you see, not what you think you’re supposed to see.”
David Chapman, https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1743671840302600537