alt Hacker NewsIt's definitely important to change the game, because there will (sadly) always be a supply of unscrupulous people if dishonesty is rewarded. But I do think the incentive-focused approach sometimes undermines itself. One of the ways to disincentivize dishonesty is to have strong social sanctions against dishonest people, so it's (arguably) pretty stupid to weaken this with a "don't hate the player" attitude. And we tend to work harder to prevent and punish offenses that stir our emotions, so if everyone is blasé about academic dishonesty then we'll probably continue to see lax enforcement and weak penalties.
I think this is the right tension, in that bad incentives matter, but that does not remove personal responsibility. We probably need both stronger accountability for clear misconduct and better systems that make rigor, transparency, and verification easier to pursue in the first place. The second piece gets much less attention than it should. That is a big part of what we’re trying to tackle at Liberata: https://liberata.info/beta-signup