Restrictions on Science Should Be Rejected And Academic Misconduct Should Be Rejected As Well

            Today’s post was inspired by a new study published by Nature out of the University of Wisconsin. It talks about the destruction of science, and how Trump is destroying science. Authoritarianism regimes around the world have famously suppressed science and been anti-science and anti-math. One of my favorite shows on Netflix is the “Three Body Problem,” and this show peripherally touches on my research agenda which deals with game theory and problems involving multiple players, including three players. (Though I did accidentally get the square root of three in a lunch with my Dad, and got it without doing calculations off by .01, my favorite number in the universe is e, or Euler’s number, and e and the number zero are awesome because they both have incredibly special, spiritual properties and can be seen in nature, and I refer readers to my post on biophysics.) 

            The “3 body problem” on Netflix is based a book by a Chinese dissident and science fiction writer and the TV show westernizes much of the book and was heavily critiqued for being anti-China. But unquestionably during eras in China if you believe the show (and the book), Chinese scientists faced severe restrictions on their ability to conduct research and tell the truth. In the Netflix show, in one of the first scenes, a physicist is executed for teaching Einstein’s theory of special relativity to his students. 

            Today’s attacks on science are equally pernicious, but they are not always obvious. I’ve told the story of how I wrongfully failed a class at Cornell when I was too sick to take a test, and how I derived Clairaut’s theorem accidentally and was not believed by my teacher, the TA, or my tutors until I saw it in a book at UC Berkeley. This should not have happened. I was “leveraged” by my Cornell teacher, who had it out for me for various reasons and refused to give me an extension or an incomplete when I was physically ill. I also discussed rampant misconduct I saw in that class, and I’ve witnessed cheating in almost all classes I’ve taken as an older student. 

            So today’s post is about academic misconduct in law and science and how it’s frankly shocking in small ways as well as large, and how we as a community should hold ourselves to higher standards because the notion of justice is built on truth or at least getting to the truth, even if the justice system also is about resolving disputes between private parties, but science is even more about truth. I haven’t cheated myself, and sometimes people who don’t cheat pay a price because I’ve been counseled to cheat repeatedly throughout my career, and even heard people boasting about cheating. (I’m naming no names.) 

            But in the end, the only scientists who ever changed the world did so honestly. And big Nobel laureates don’t cheat, even if John Nash may have attempted to discredit Merrill Flood, who I’ve already explained in my LinkedIn comments was also likely wrong, even if I’m not doing this proof and I give my idea away to the Universe if anyone else wants to write a paper about Merrill Flood and a better solution to the “Pennies Game.” And in the end, cheaters hopefully do get caught, or if they don’t they remediate themselves, just like the woman at Harvard who had her papers on the honesty pledge retracted and she lost tenure. I stake my life on my integrity, and I invite others to take the same “honesty/integrity” pledge, and this one is real and made internally. 


-Cortelyou C. Kenney, 6/17/25 5:41 pm PT

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