Dont single out Dundee students as "dishonest"

Editor - It will, I hope, be seen as a rather entertaining juxtaposition: an article declaring that students should stop taking oaths side by side with an article suggesting students accept academic dishonesty in Mays studentBMJ.¹

I was in my first year at Dundee University when a fourth year student presented us with a questionnaire for her fourth year project, a year long research special study module. I can assure your readers that my classmates and I never thought that the results of the study might be published and would come back some day and haunt the participants by suggesting, to a national audience, that we are dishonest. I draw only a little comfort from the fact that out of the students who participated, my year was the most "honest."

The defence of the students at the time of first publication was pretty lame. The robust response of faculty secretary Walter Williamson this time might be related to the slant the current reprint has taken: the students became more dishonest whilst passing through medical school; cheating is learned perhaps by modelling, and is not congenital.

But what grates most with the students who took part is that the study makes no comparison with other medical students. There is an implication that Dundee students are dishonest, but maybe students elsewhere arent. It would also have been appreciated if the faculty of medicine, who are always delighted to see their students work published, had shown a little more foresight in this instance or at least apologised to the affected student body for allowing an (over) eager classmate to besmirch our name.

1. Goldie S. Scottish medical students accept acts of academic misconduct studentBMJ 2003;11:138. (May.)