#malpractice — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #malpractice, aggregated by home.social.
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What is the problem to which cognitive outsourcing is the solution?
This paper by Thomas Corbin et al reports on a pilot study of philosophy undergraduates exploring their use of AI-reading tools. Their analysis of half of students using generative AI tools in some way for reading. Interestingly, the vast majority (79.1%) recognised the importance of this reading while also citing limited time (65.7%) and intellectually difficulty (33.3%) with the texts. They suggest a positive trend underlying the familiar fears about cognitive outsourcing. From pg 6:
The strong positive sentiment toward GenAI availability (76.2%) suggests these tools are making students more comfortable with challenging content, potentially lowering anxiety barriers to engagement with complex reading material. By providing alternative entry points to challenging texts, GenAI tools may help democratise access, particularly for students who face epistemic barriers to traditional engagement with reading materials. However, this optimistic interpretation must be balanced against potential risks. While GenAI may help students overcome initial barriers, over-reliance on AI-generated summaries could potentially impede the development of critical reading and interpretive skills that are essential to philosophical education.
This is what I mean about the need to respond diagnostically to student AI use. There are real problems in teaching and learning being surfaced by developing trends in student AI-use. What is the problem to which cognitive outsourcing is the solution for students? In asking this question it becomes possible to diagnose the underlying challenges which pre-existed generative AI, as well as to better understand student use in a manner which enables us to steer them towards active rather than passive use of AI.
#AI #assessment #cognitiveOutsourcing #literature #malpractice #readings -
We need structural changes to assessment rather than discursive changes
This is the slightly overstated thesis of this paper. It rests on what I think is a genuinely useful distinction between discursive and structural changes to assessment:
Modifications that rely solely on the communication of instructions, rules, or guidelines to students, such that their success depends entirely on student awareness, understanding, and voluntary compliance with these communica- tions. These changes leave the underlying structure and mechanics of the assessment task unchanged, focusing instead on specifying how students should approach or complete the task.
1091Modifications that directly alter the nature, format, or mechanics of how a task must be completed, such that the success of these changes is not reliant on the student’s understanding, interpretation, or compliance with instructions. Instead, these changes reshape the underlying framework of the task, constraining or opening the student’s approach in ways that are built into the assessment itself.
1092-1093The traffic light systems, the 4/5 point AI assessment scale (AIAS) and declarations all constitute discursive approaches in that they fundamentally change how we communicate about assessment. There are three problems which the authors identify with these approaches:
- They assume student understanding when the application of abstract categories to real world practice will always be ambiguous, particularly when those categories are formatted at the level of abstraction necessary for a large multidisciplinary university.
- They assume student voluntary compliance with the approach, in spite of significant incentives to non-compliance and the aforementioned ambiguity about what constitutes compliance.
- They assume student compliance can be meaningfully assessed when there is not really any mechanism through which to do this.
In contrast structural changes actually modify the assessment “by creating conditions where inappropriate AI use becomes difficult or impossible” (1093). These changes can vary but effect ones involve a move from product to process, as well as designing interconnections between assessments such that “the validity of assessment comes not from any single component but from the coherent demonstration of learning across multiple appropriately designed touch points unfortunately” (1095).
The obvious problem that I’m abundantly familiar with as someone who ran a large PGT programme is that it is extremely hard to scale processual assessment. In large cohorts you need to resort to digital platforms in order to do it, which mitigates exactly the assessment security that processual assessment is supposed to provided. This is clearly the way to go in a perfect environment: processual assessment strategy with a healthy dose of authentic tasks and well-designed group would go some way to solving the problems we are no encountering. But I remain unconvinced you can do this reliably in any environment other than, say, the Oxbridge system. The class sizes have to be small and the teacher/student ratio has to be healthy with stable relationships between them. Otherwise it breaks down.
I say that I think this thesis is overstated because it’s not clear to me that discursive changes are necessarily toothless. Firstly, if we assume that the majority of students start from the position of wanting to learn and to follow the rules (two different things) then clarifying expectations is inherently valuable. It provides students with guidance about how to ensure they are learning and to ensure they are not engaged in malpractice. The fact the sector has been crap at doing this doesn’t license the weird dismissiveness in the paper towards clarifying expectations. Secondly, once we have clarified those expectations it becomes possible to have malpractice processes which are more targeted and fine grained. It doesn’t solve the problem but it seems to me inherently better than not having the discursive shift in the first place.
I think their assumption is that assessment structural shift has to happen so why not start now? As they put it on 1096:
The time invested in developing and implementing these discursive approaches is time that could otherwise be used to consider structural changes that will actually work to ensure assessment validity as well as the veracity and reputation of our degrees. When assessment validity hinges on student compliance with unenforceable rules rather than on inherent assessment design, we build educational systems on foundations of sand. Long term solutions require fun- damentally rethinking how assessments are structured rather than how they are explained.
I’m somewhat sympathetic to this view but I also think it’s such a long term process, in such a resource-constrained environment, that we do seriously risk a complete collapse of trust in credentials before then. So how do we undertake discursive approaches (adapting to AI in my terms) while still working towards structural changes (integrating AI in my terms)? How do we stop the former crowding out the space for the latter? The way they describe the two-lane approach opens up a framework for thinking institutionally about how that might be possible. From 1095
#AI #assessment #assessmentIntegrity #higherEducation #malpracticeOne immediate benefit of adopting this structural perspective is that it provides a clearer lens for evaluating emerging institutional frameworks, such as the university of sydney’s ‘two-lane approach’ (Liu and Bridgeman 2023). This framework distinguishes between ‘secure’ (Lane 1) assess- ments which are conducted in-person with controlled conditions, and ‘Open’ (Lane 2) assessments where AI use is uncontrolled (Tertiary Education Quality and standards Agency 2024, p. 51). The structural/discursive distinction we propose offers a potentially useful lens for understanding and extending the efficacy of such approaches. While Lane 1 assessments incorporate structural ele- ments by creating environments where inappropriate AI use is physically restricted, the effectiveness of Lane 2 assessments depends on how they are designed structurally, as simply designating an assessment as ‘Open’ without reconsidering its structural mechanics perpetuates the enforcement illusion we have identified. The most effective implementations of dual-track approaches such as these will therefore be those that recognise the need for structural reconsideration of assessment design in both lanes, albeit in different ways.
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In 2018, my Dad passed away, and I went to India. As I was kneeling by his dead body, grieving, my brother thrust a bunch of blank sheets of paper in front of my face, and said, "Sign these. They are for the division of property, and I need your power of attorney. It's just a formality." I was not thinking clearly at this point, and trusted him enough to sign the blank papers.
In 2022, I was visiting India again, and my brother and my mother told me that I was not getting anything out of my Dad's inheritance, and that I had signed it all over to them. This came as a shock!
I returned to America, and saw an American psychiatrist. She told me that I seemed fine, and tapered down my pills to zero, over some time, under her periodic supervision.
Immediately, my thinking cleared up. A mental fog lifted. Suddenly, I was thinking as lucidly and effortlessly, as I am used to, as I did in 2008, 14 years ago.
Since then, I fell out with my mother and brother. When I fell on hard times as a whistleblower, they would not help me. My brother was drinking expensive whiskey over a video call, as he refused to lend me even $30. He said he had a party to go to.
Later, when I had been homeless and starving for days, he agreed to give me $1000 , after demanding that I email him, saying I would drop the matter of Dad's inheritance.
I want to warn people against Dr. R. N. Sahu and his psychiatric malpractice.
#bhopal #india #malpractice #medicalMalpractice #Psychiatry #AntiPsychiatry #law #legal #Medicine #Doctor
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How sanctioned doctors keep practising across the French-Belgian border.
Because they fail to consult European alerts on suspensions or removals, France and Belgium allow doctors with problematic pasts to practice in their neighbouring country.
The Internal Market Information (IMI) system, specifically created by the EU to enable the exchange of disciplinary decisions at the European level, is rarely used, if at all.
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How sanctioned doctors keep practising across the French-Belgian border.
Because they fail to consult European alerts on suspensions or removals, France and Belgium allow doctors with problematic pasts to practice in their neighbouring country.
The Internal Market Information (IMI) system, specifically created by the EU to enable the exchange of disciplinary decisions at the European level, is rarely used, if at all.
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How sanctioned doctors keep practising across the French-Belgian border.
Because they fail to consult European alerts on suspensions or removals, France and Belgium allow doctors with problematic pasts to practice in their neighbouring country.
The Internal Market Information (IMI) system, specifically created by the EU to enable the exchange of disciplinary decisions at the European level, is rarely used, if at all.
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How sanctioned doctors keep practising across the French-Belgian border.
Because they fail to consult European alerts on suspensions or removals, France and Belgium allow doctors with problematic pasts to practice in their neighbouring country.
The Internal Market Information (IMI) system, specifically created by the EU to enable the exchange of disciplinary decisions at the European level, is rarely used, if at all.
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How sanctioned doctors keep practising across the French-Belgian border.
Because they fail to consult European alerts on suspensions or removals, France and Belgium allow doctors with problematic pasts to practice in their neighbouring country.
The Internal Market Information (IMI) system, specifically created by the EU to enable the exchange of disciplinary decisions at the European level, is rarely used, if at all.
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Do Thajska na dovolenou možná radši nejezdit! "Míně selhalo srdce třikrát [...] teďka napočtvrtý čtyrikrát jí nahodili [...] jí převezli z jedný nemocnice do druhý [...] tam jí nechali na chodbě 15 minut Samir tam po 15 minutách začal vyvádět zavolali tam na něj policajty" -- 'podle zdrcené rodiny měla být okamžitě vrtulníkem přepravena do Bangkoku"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1u4zweH91w&t=90s
#thajsko #zanedbánípéče #dovolená #bangkok #kohsamui #medicalneglect #malpractice #thailand #holidays
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Do Thajska na dovolenou možná radši nejezdit! "Míně selhalo srdce třikrát [...] teďka napočtvrtý čtyrikrát jí nahodili [...] jí převezli z jedný nemocnice do druhý [...] tam jí nechali na chodbě 15 minut Samir tam po 15 minutách začal vyvádět zavolali tam na něj policajty" -- 'podle zdrcené rodiny měla být okamžitě vrtulníkem přepravena do Bangkoku"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1u4zweH91w&t=90s
#thajsko #zanedbánípéče #dovolená #bangkok #kohsamui #medicalneglect #malpractice #thailand #holidays
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Do Thajska na dovolenou možná radši nejezdit! "Míně selhalo srdce třikrát [...] teďka napočtvrtý čtyrikrát jí nahodili [...] jí převezli z jedný nemocnice do druhý [...] tam jí nechali na chodbě 15 minut Samir tam po 15 minutách začal vyvádět zavolali tam na něj policajty" -- 'podle zdrcené rodiny měla být okamžitě vrtulníkem přepravena do Bangkoku"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1u4zweH91w&t=90s
#thajsko #zanedbánípéče #dovolená #bangkok #kohsamui #medicalneglect #malpractice #thailand #holidays
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Do Thajska na dovolenou možná radši nejezdit! "Míně selhalo srdce třikrát [...] teďka napočtvrtý čtyrikrát jí nahodili [...] jí převezli z jedný nemocnice do druhý [...] tam jí nechali na chodbě 15 minut Samir tam po 15 minutách začal vyvádět zavolali tam na něj policajty" -- 'podle zdrcené rodiny měla být okamžitě vrtulníkem přepravena do Bangkoku"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1u4zweH91w&t=90s
#thajsko #zanedbánípéče #dovolená #bangkok #kohsamui #medicalneglect #malpractice #thailand #holidays
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Do Thajska na dovolenou možná radši nejezdit! "Míně selhalo srdce třikrát [...] teďka napočtvrtý čtyrikrát jí nahodili [...] jí převezli z jedný nemocnice do druhý [...] tam jí nechali na chodbě 15 minut Samir tam po 15 minutách začal vyvádět zavolali tam na něj policajty" -- 'podle zdrcené rodiny měla být okamžitě vrtulníkem přepravena do Bangkoku"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1u4zweH91w&t=90s
#thajsko #zanedbánípéče #dovolená #bangkok #kohsamui #medicalneglect #malpractice #thailand #holidays
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This is exactly what I mean by #misinformation "inside the house" being corrosive to public trust. It's clear #malpractice, and a serious breach of medical ethics - some combination of unacceptable ignorance and/or intentional misrepresentation, endangering patient health. #medsky #scisky
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:isg4jxnekd7wtv23aqmhnraj/post/3mhp5xpgf2c2f -
This is exactly what I mean by #misinformation "inside the house" being corrosive to public trust. It's clear #malpractice, and a serious breach of medical ethics - some combination of unacceptable ignorance and/or intentional misrepresentation, endangering patient health. #medsky #scisky
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:isg4jxnekd7wtv23aqmhnraj/post/3mhp5xpgf2c2f -
This is exactly what I mean by #misinformation "inside the house" being corrosive to public trust. It's clear #malpractice, and a serious breach of medical ethics - some combination of unacceptable ignorance and/or intentional misrepresentation, endangering patient health. #medsky #scisky
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:isg4jxnekd7wtv23aqmhnraj/post/3mhp5xpgf2c2f -
This is exactly what I mean by #misinformation "inside the house" being corrosive to public trust. It's clear #malpractice, and a serious breach of medical ethics - some combination of unacceptable ignorance and/or intentional misrepresentation, endangering patient health. #medsky #scisky
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:isg4jxnekd7wtv23aqmhnraj/post/3mhp5xpgf2c2f -
This is exactly what I mean by #misinformation "inside the house" being corrosive to public trust. It's clear #malpractice, and a serious breach of medical ethics - some combination of unacceptable ignorance and/or intentional misrepresentation, endangering patient health. #medsky #scisky
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:isg4jxnekd7wtv23aqmhnraj/post/3mhp5xpgf2c2f -
TSA leaves passenger needing surgery after illegally forcing her through scanner
#HackerNews #TSA #Scandal #Passenger #Rights #Airport #Safety #Medical #Malpractice
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As AI enters the #operating room, reports arise of botched #surgeries and misidentified body parts
#Medical device makers have been rushing to add #AI to their products.
While proponents say the new technology will revolutionize #medicine, regulators are receiving a rising number of claims of #patient #injuries.
#Malpractice #doctors #surgery #operations #hospitals #errors #AIFail
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@TheEconomist Wrecks Its Limited Credibility in Article on #DarkFactories That Ignores That #China Already Has a Lot of Them
" #TheEconomist has managed to sink to an astonishing low in a new #article, The “ChatGPT moment” has arrived for #manufacturing. Its managed te impressive show of #ignorance in a multi-page piece on te future of #production.. There's no justification for its grotesque #malpractice, of affirmatively making #readers stupid"🤦♂️
#nakedcapitalism ✅️ +1
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/the-economist-wrecks-its-limited-credibility-in-article-on-dark-factories-that-ignores-that-china-already-has-a-lot-of-them.html -
@TheEconomist Wrecks Its Limited Credibility in Article on #DarkFactories That Ignores That #China Already Has a Lot of Them
" #TheEconomist has managed to sink to an astonishing low in a new #article, The “ChatGPT moment” has arrived for #manufacturing. Its managed te impressive show of #ignorance in a multi-page piece on te future of #production.. There's no justification for its grotesque #malpractice, of affirmatively making #readers stupid"🤦♂️
#nakedcapitalism ✅️ +1
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/the-economist-wrecks-its-limited-credibility-in-article-on-dark-factories-that-ignores-that-china-already-has-a-lot-of-them.html -
@TheEconomist Wrecks Its Limited Credibility in Article on #DarkFactories That Ignores That #China Already Has a Lot of Them
" #TheEconomist has managed to sink to an astonishing low in a new #article, The “ChatGPT moment” has arrived for #manufacturing. Its managed te impressive show of #ignorance in a multi-page piece on te future of #production.. There's no justification for its grotesque #malpractice, of affirmatively making #readers stupid"🤦♂️
#nakedcapitalism ✅️ +1
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/the-economist-wrecks-its-limited-credibility-in-article-on-dark-factories-that-ignores-that-china-already-has-a-lot-of-them.html -
@TheEconomist Wrecks Its Limited Credibility in Article on #DarkFactories That Ignores That #China Already Has a Lot of Them
" #TheEconomist has managed to sink to an astonishing low in a new #article, The “ChatGPT moment” has arrived for #manufacturing. Its managed te impressive show of #ignorance in a multi-page piece on te future of #production.. There's no justification for its grotesque #malpractice, of affirmatively making #readers stupid"🤦♂️
#nakedcapitalism ✅️ +1
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/the-economist-wrecks-its-limited-credibility-in-article-on-dark-factories-that-ignores-that-china-already-has-a-lot-of-them.html -
@TheEconomist Wrecks Its Limited Credibility in Article on #DarkFactories That Ignores That #China Already Has a Lot of Them
" #TheEconomist has managed to sink to an astonishing low in a new #article, The “ChatGPT moment” has arrived for #manufacturing. Its managed te impressive show of #ignorance in a multi-page piece on te future of #production.. There's no justification for its grotesque #malpractice, of affirmatively making #readers stupid"🤦♂️
#nakedcapitalism ✅️ +1
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/the-economist-wrecks-its-limited-credibility-in-article-on-dark-factories-that-ignores-that-china-already-has-a-lot-of-them.html -
https://www.europesays.com/uk/704609/ Husband Blames Medical Negligence for Wife’s Death in Kano #AbubakarBinji #AishatuUmar #GrievingHusband #Health #Healthcare #HealthcareInNigeria #HealthcareNigeria #HospitalMalpractice #HospitalNegligence #Kano #KanoHospital #LegalAction #Malpractice #MedicalMalpractice #MedicalNegligence #NigerianHealthSector #NigerianHealthcare #PatientRights #PatientSafety #PatientStory #SurgicalError #UK #UnitedKingdom #WrongfulDeath
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Have LLMs destroyed essay mills?
I found myself wondering about this when I stumbled across a photo I took in London nearly ten years ago. It was jarring to be reminded how visible LLMs were such that they literally took out advertising on the tube. It’s ironic these were banned in the UK only months before the launch of ChatGPT. The language of the policy suggests potential complexity about its implementation:
It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.
Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.
Don’t get me wrong. This was clearly a good thing. But given how much of a drugs trade (as well as a fraud trade predicated on getting people to transfer money for non-existent drugs) exists through mass commercial social media platforms, it’s difficult to imagine that a prohibition would be particularly effective. It would increase the costs of doing business and make essay mills less accessible to those students who were only dimly curious about the possibility. But it wouldn’t remove them from the internet.
Obviously LLMs were a different proposition. Why pay hundreds of pounds for an essay that can be produced through a chatbot? This was always more complex than it was imagined such that we’re only now (with Claude 4.5, Gemini 3 and GPT 5.2 as well as their deep research functions) when you can meaningfully hope to produce a ‘good’ essay based on the title alone. But how much of the work of essays mills was ‘good’ in the first place? Obviously the economic proposition which essay mills made to students fundamentally changed, suggesting a plausible possibility that LLMs overnight decimated any potential mass market for contract cheating.
Interestingly Joseph Thibault suggests that traffic has declined significantly but the essay mills have not died off:
While AI writing tech (not frontier models or wrapped products but services explicitly offering writing help to students, including ‘humanising’) traffic has jumped:
If the database he’s curating is reasonably representative this is good prima facie evidence for thinking that essays mills haven’t died and also suspecting that parts of the industry have pivoted into AI-enabled cheating. This raises the question of why they haven’t died? How have their offerings changed? Who is paying for them? Are writers now using LLMs themselves? How do students distinguish between automated writing and human expert writing? There’s a cruel irony in the image of students paying for contract cheating that is effectively done by someone using an LLM that the student could have accessed themselves.
#contractCheating #essayMills #generativeAI #humanisingServices #LLMs #malpractice #students #writingServices
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Have LLMs destroyed essay mills?
I found myself wondering about this when I stumbled across a photo I took in London nearly ten years ago. It was jarring to be reminded how visible LLMs were such that they literally took out advertising on the tube.
It’s ironic these were banned in the UK only months before the launch of ChatGPT. The language of the policy suggests potential complexity about its implementation:
It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.
Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.
Don’t get me wrong. This was clearly a good thing. But given how much of a drugs trade (as well as a fraud trade predicated on getting people to transfer money for non-existent drugs) exists through mass commercial social media platforms, it’s difficult to imagine that a prohibition would be particularly effective. It would increase the costs of doing business and make essay mills less accessible to those students who were only dimly curious about the possibility. But it wouldn’t remove them from the internet.
Obviously LLMs were a different proposition. Why pay hundreds of pounds for an essay that can be produced through a chatbot? This was always more complex than it was imagined such that we’re only now (with Claude 4.5, Gemini 3 and GPT 5.2 as well as their deep research functions) when you can meaningfully hope to produce a ‘good’ essay based on the title alone. But how much of the work of essays mills was ‘good’ in the first place? Obviously the economic proposition which essay mills made to students fundamentally changed, suggesting a plausible possibility that LLMs overnight decimated any potential mass market for contract cheating.
Interestingly Joseph Thibault suggests that traffic has declined significantly but the essay mills have not died off:
While AI writing tech (not frontier models or wrapped products but services explicitly offering writing help to students, including ‘humanising’) traffic has jumped:
If the database he’s curating is reasonably representative this is good prima facie evidence for thinking that essays mills haven’t died and also suspecting that parts of the industry have pivoted into AI-enabled cheating. This raises the question of why they haven’t died? How have their offerings changed? Who is paying for them? Are writers now using LLMs themselves? How do students distinguish between automated writing and human expert writing? There’s a cruel irony in the image of students paying for contract cheating that is effectively done by someone using an LLM that the student could have accessed themselves.
Could the great assessment panic have ironically propped up this market by creating such anxiety amongst students about what counts as ‘cheating with AI’ that they find it reassuring to continue to buy these products from an essay mill instead?
Interesting that there have been no recorded offences under the law:
However, both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Department for Education told the BBC they had no recorded offences reaching a first hearing in a magistrate’s court under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
#contractCheating #essayMills #generativeAI #humanisingServices #LLMs #malpractice #students #writingServices
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Have LLMs destroyed essay mills?
I found myself wondering about this when I stumbled across a photo I took in London nearly ten years ago. It was jarring to be reminded how visible LLMs were such that they literally took out advertising on the tube.
It’s ironic these were banned in the UK only months before the launch of ChatGPT. The language of the policy suggests potential complexity about its implementation:
It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.
Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.
Don’t get me wrong. This was clearly a good thing. But given how much of a drugs trade (as well as a fraud trade predicated on getting people to transfer money for non-existent drugs) exists through mass commercial social media platforms, it’s difficult to imagine that a prohibition would be particularly effective. It would increase the costs of doing business and make essay mills less accessible to those students who were only dimly curious about the possibility. But it wouldn’t remove them from the internet.
Obviously LLMs were a different proposition. Why pay hundreds of pounds for an essay that can be produced through a chatbot? This was always more complex than it was imagined such that we’re only now (with Claude 4.5, Gemini 3 and GPT 5.2 as well as their deep research functions) when you can meaningfully hope to produce a ‘good’ essay based on the title alone. But how much of the work of essays mills was ‘good’ in the first place? Obviously the economic proposition which essay mills made to students fundamentally changed, suggesting a plausible possibility that LLMs overnight decimated any potential mass market for contract cheating.
Interestingly Joseph Thibault suggests that traffic has declined significantly but the essay mills have not died off:
While AI writing tech (not frontier models or wrapped products but services explicitly offering writing help to students, including ‘humanising’) traffic has jumped:
If the database he’s curating is reasonably representative this is good prima facie evidence for thinking that essays mills haven’t died and also suspecting that parts of the industry have pivoted into AI-enabled cheating. This raises the question of why they haven’t died? How have their offerings changed? Who is paying for them? Are writers now using LLMs themselves? How do students distinguish between automated writing and human expert writing? There’s a cruel irony in the image of students paying for contract cheating that is effectively done by someone using an LLM that the student could have accessed themselves.
Could the great assessment panic have ironically propped up this market by creating such anxiety amongst students about what counts as ‘cheating with AI’ that they find it reassuring to continue to buy these products from an essay mill instead?
Interesting that there have been no recorded offences under the law:
However, both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Department for Education told the BBC they had no recorded offences reaching a first hearing in a magistrate’s court under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
#contractCheating #essayMills #generativeAI #humanisingServices #LLMs #malpractice #students #writingServices
-
Have LLMs destroyed essay mills?
I found myself wondering about this when I stumbled across a photo I took in London nearly ten years ago. It was jarring to be reminded how visible LLMs were such that they literally took out advertising on the tube.
It’s ironic these were banned in the UK only months before the launch of ChatGPT. The language of the policy suggests potential complexity about its implementation:
It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.
Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.
Don’t get me wrong. This was clearly a good thing. But given how much of a drugs trade (as well as a fraud trade predicated on getting people to transfer money for non-existent drugs) exists through mass commercial social media platforms, it’s difficult to imagine that a prohibition would be particularly effective. It would increase the costs of doing business and make essay mills less accessible to those students who were only dimly curious about the possibility. But it wouldn’t remove them from the internet.
Obviously LLMs were a different proposition. Why pay hundreds of pounds for an essay that can be produced through a chatbot? This was always more complex than it was imagined such that we’re only now (with Claude 4.5, Gemini 3 and GPT 5.2 as well as their deep research functions) when you can meaningfully hope to produce a ‘good’ essay based on the title alone. But how much of the work of essays mills was ‘good’ in the first place? Obviously the economic proposition which essay mills made to students fundamentally changed, suggesting a plausible possibility that LLMs overnight decimated any potential mass market for contract cheating.
Interestingly Joseph Thibault suggests that traffic has declined significantly but the essay mills have not died off:
While AI writing tech (not frontier models or wrapped products but services explicitly offering writing help to students, including ‘humanising’) traffic has jumped:
If the database he’s curating is reasonably representative this is good prima facie evidence for thinking that essays mills haven’t died and also suspecting that parts of the industry have pivoted into AI-enabled cheating. This raises the question of why they haven’t died? How have their offerings changed? Who is paying for them? Are writers now using LLMs themselves? How do students distinguish between automated writing and human expert writing? There’s a cruel irony in the image of students paying for contract cheating that is effectively done by someone using an LLM that the student could have accessed themselves.
Could the great assessment panic have ironically propped up this market by creating such anxiety amongst students about what counts as ‘cheating with AI’ that they find it reassuring to continue to buy these products from an essay mill instead?
Interesting that there have been no recorded offences under the law:
However, both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Department for Education told the BBC they had no recorded offences reaching a first hearing in a magistrate’s court under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
#contractCheating #essayMills #generativeAI #humanisingServices #LLMs #malpractice #students #writingServices
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Have LLMs destroyed essay mills?
I found myself wondering about this when I stumbled across a photo I took in London nearly ten years ago. It was jarring to be reminded how visible LLMs were such that they literally took out advertising on the tube.
It’s ironic these were banned in the UK only months before the launch of ChatGPT. The language of the policy suggests potential complexity about its implementation:
It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.
Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.
Don’t get me wrong. This was clearly a good thing. But given how much of a drugs trade (as well as a fraud trade predicated on getting people to transfer money for non-existent drugs) exists through mass commercial social media platforms, it’s difficult to imagine that a prohibition would be particularly effective. It would increase the costs of doing business and make essay mills less accessible to those students who were only dimly curious about the possibility. But it wouldn’t remove them from the internet.
Obviously LLMs were a different proposition. Why pay hundreds of pounds for an essay that can be produced through a chatbot? This was always more complex than it was imagined such that we’re only now (with Claude 4.5, Gemini 3 and GPT 5.2 as well as their deep research functions) when you can meaningfully hope to produce a ‘good’ essay based on the title alone. But how much of the work of essays mills was ‘good’ in the first place? Obviously the economic proposition which essay mills made to students fundamentally changed, suggesting a plausible possibility that LLMs overnight decimated any potential mass market for contract cheating.
Interestingly Joseph Thibault suggests that traffic has declined significantly but the essay mills have not died off:
While AI writing tech (not frontier models or wrapped products but services explicitly offering writing help to students, including ‘humanising’) traffic has jumped:
If the database he’s curating is reasonably representative this is good prima facie evidence for thinking that essays mills haven’t died and also suspecting that parts of the industry have pivoted into AI-enabled cheating. This raises the question of why they haven’t died? How have their offerings changed? Who is paying for them? Are writers now using LLMs themselves? How do students distinguish between automated writing and human expert writing? There’s a cruel irony in the image of students paying for contract cheating that is effectively done by someone using an LLM that the student could have accessed themselves.
Could the great assessment panic have ironically propped up this market by creating such anxiety amongst students about what counts as ‘cheating with AI’ that they find it reassuring to continue to buy these products from an essay mill instead?
Interesting that there have been no recorded offences under the law:
However, both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Department for Education told the BBC they had no recorded offences reaching a first hearing in a magistrate’s court under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
#contractCheating #essayMills #generativeAI #humanisingServices #LLMs #malpractice #students #writingServices
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NHS reported to police after 'butcher surgeon' evidence destroyed - Sky News https://apple.news/AI489EpxTQEOjAIcYDGyoRQ
#nhs #dundee #malpractice -
2 of 2
IMAGINE DOING THAT TOOTHBRUSH THING WITH YOUR CLITORIS, MA’AM! Or, fellow men, if you are intact, imagine doing it!
I am 68 now, and I WOULD GIVE MY RIGHT ARM if I could live again, WITH my foreskin!
And, BTW, for most of my life, until ~13 years ago, I thought, “I’m circumcised and I’m OK with it!” – believing that the problems I DID actually have were my own, private, problems.
It was only when someone sent me to https://www.circumstitions.com that I realized that I had these diverse problems in common with circumcised (i.e. genitally mutilated) men. That was a harsh awakening for sure, from the #denial that #intactivists call the #CircumcisionComa.
________________
This is about the #barbaric #malpractice of #circumcision, of male #genital_mutilation
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1 of 2
Time to share this again because my life’s time is running out, I may have a year or two left but could just as well drop any day. Therefore I need to spread this far and wide, as I am a victim of this #barbaric #malpractice of #circumcision, of male #genital_mutilation.
I was circumcised shortly before my 6th birthday – I FKN REMEMBER HOW MUCH MORE SENSITIVE I WAS “DOWN THERE” before they did it to me, what extremely joyous, “electric”, feelings I had when I touched my glans and played with my foreskin, feelings that ran through my whole body from there.
In my twenties already there was NOTHING of that sensitivity anymore, you could press a #toothbrush against my glans and I’d not even know what was happening there unless I’d LOOK, I am so numb there that I only have very vague feeling of pressure there, and temperature, but nothing erogenous, no joyous feelings anymore.
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1 of 2
Time to share this again because my life’s time is running out, I may have a year or two left but could just as well drop any day. Therefore I need to spread this far and wide, as I am a victim of this #barbaric #malpractice of #circumcision, of male #genital_mutilation.
I was circumcised shortly before my 6th birthday – I FKN REMEMBER HOW MUCH MORE SENSITIVE I WAS “DOWN THERE” before they did it to me, what extremely joyous, “electric”, feelings I had when I touched my glans and played with my foreskin, feelings that ran through my whole body from there.
In my twenties already there was NOTHING of that sensitivity anymore, you could press a #toothbrush against my glans and I’d not even know what was happening there unless I’d LOOK, I am so numb there that I only have very vague feeling of pressure there, and temperature, but nothing erogenous, no joyous feelings anymore.
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1 of 2
Time to share this again because my life’s time is running out, I may have a year or two left but could just as well drop any day. Therefore I need to spread this far and wide, as I am a victim of this #barbaric #malpractice of #circumcision, of male #genital_mutilation.
I was circumcised shortly before my 6th birthday – I FKN REMEMBER HOW MUCH MORE SENSITIVE I WAS “DOWN THERE” before they did it to me, what extremely joyous, “electric”, feelings I had when I touched my glans and played with my foreskin, feelings that ran through my whole body from there.
In my twenties already there was NOTHING of that sensitivity anymore, you could press a #toothbrush against my glans and I’d not even know what was happening there unless I’d LOOK, I am so numb there that I only have very vague feeling of pressure there, and temperature, but nothing erogenous, no joyous feelings anymore.
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1 of 2
Time to share this again because my life’s time is running out, I may have a year or two left but could just as well drop any day. Therefore I need to spread this far and wide, as I am a victim of this #barbaric #malpractice of #circumcision, of male #genital_mutilation.
I was circumcised shortly before my 6th birthday – I FKN REMEMBER HOW MUCH MORE SENSITIVE I WAS “DOWN THERE” before they did it to me, what extremely joyous, “electric”, feelings I had when I touched my glans and played with my foreskin, feelings that ran through my whole body from there.
In my twenties already there was NOTHING of that sensitivity anymore, you could press a #toothbrush against my glans and I’d not even know what was happening there unless I’d LOOK, I am so numb there that I only have very vague feeling of pressure there, and temperature, but nothing erogenous, no joyous feelings anymore.
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1 of 2
Time to share this again because my life’s time is running out, I may have a year or two left but could just as well drop any day. Therefore I need to spread this far and wide, as I am a victim of this #barbaric #malpractice of #circumcision, of male #genital_mutilation.
I was circumcised shortly before my 6th birthday – I FKN REMEMBER HOW MUCH MORE SENSITIVE I WAS “DOWN THERE” before they did it to me, what extremely joyous, “electric”, feelings I had when I touched my glans and played with my foreskin, feelings that ran through my whole body from there.
In my twenties already there was NOTHING of that sensitivity anymore, you could press a #toothbrush against my glans and I’d not even know what was happening there unless I’d LOOK, I am so numb there that I only have very vague feeling of pressure there, and temperature, but nothing erogenous, no joyous feelings anymore.
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Tom Malinowski: "When anyone proposes safeguards on AI, the Trump Administration says 'no -- that will slow us down and China will win the AI race.'
Then it lets NVIDIA sell advanced AI chips to China that will help it win the race.
The only common thread is giving AI companies what they want.
#politics #AI #tech #Trump #malpractice #corruption -
"In the weeks after Joe Biden was elected president, advisers delivered a warning: His approach to immigration could prove disastrous. His positions threatened to drastically increase border crossings, experts advising his transition team warned in the final weeks of 2020. That jump, they said, could provoke a political crisis."
By ignoring this warning, Biden helped to re-elect Trump as president:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/us/politics/biden-immigration-trump.html
#Biden #malpractice #ignorance #politics #NotAsBadAsBidensDebate -
Doctor Who Gave #MatthewPerry #Ketamine Is Sentenced to 30 Months
The doctor, Salvador Plasencia, had asked “I wonder how much this moron will pay” before supplying the drug to Mr. Perry, who became increasingly reliant on it before his death.
#criminal #law #medicine #malpractice #addiction #exploitation
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/arts/television/matthew-perry-salvador-plasencia-sentencing.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share -
“Research Into The Lived Experiences of Circumcised Men”
“15 Square believes that it is essential to engage in dialogue respectfully and with integrity—to raise awareness about the harms that some circumcised men have experienced and to encourage open dialogue and rational thinking. As it is a concern that is often raised by people sceptical of circumcision critics is that ‘circumcision is an important part of religious and cultural practice.’
At our Annual General Meeting, 15 Square was delighted to host the work of Leeanne Morris, MSc. Leeanne has been working on research into the psychological impacts of male circumcision. Leeanne interviewed members of 15 Square and men outside our organisation and then conducted a thematic analysis to find the common experiences expressed by the participants of her research.”
https://15square.org.uk/research-into-the-lived-experiences-of-circumcised-men/#circumcision is #GenitalMutilation, is a #barbaric #malpractice.
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The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Epstein, Fuentes and Trump’s Political Erosion
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/opinion/epstein-trump-gop-fuentes.html
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The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Epstein, Fuentes and Trump’s Political Erosion
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/opinion/epstein-trump-gop-fuentes.html
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The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Epstein, Fuentes and Trump’s Political Erosion
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/opinion/epstein-trump-gop-fuentes.html
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The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Epstein, Fuentes and Trump’s Political Erosion
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/opinion/epstein-trump-gop-fuentes.html
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“The Case Against Circumcision
Why do we still engage in the ritual, nonconsensual genital mutilation of newborn boys?”https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/a64713883/is-circumcision-good-bad/
#Circumcision is a #barbaric #malpractice, it is #Genital_Mutilation.
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#Cops and #doctors are so #brainwashed. #Police brutality and #medical #malpractice are #programmed into how they operate. It's as if all they can do is #harm #people.
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#Trump’s Pressure Campaign Strains #DOJ
Current & fmr officials voice concerns over institution’s credibility
“Lawyers who work in the #Virginia [#USAttorney] outpost, known for handling high-profile national-security cases, privately expressed uncertainty Monday about their jobs & concern that the office could be forced to rush out an ill-founded case. Some sought advice from former colleagues, & were told to secure #insurance against #legal #malpractice claims.”
#law
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trumps-pressure-campaign-strains-justice-department-614d2151 -
The gap between student GenAI use and the support students are offered
I argued a couple of days ago that the sector is unprepared for our first academic year where the use of generative AI is completely normalised amongst students. HEPI found 92% of undergraduates using LLMs this year, up from 66% the previous year, which matches AdvancedHE’s finding of 62% using AI in their studies “in a way that is allowed by their university” (huge caveat). This largely accords with my own experience in which it appeared that last year LLMs become mainstream amongst students and this year they it to become a near uniform phenomenon.
The problem arises from the gap between near uniform use of LLMs in some way and the the lack of support being offered. Only 36% of students in the HEPI survey said they had been offered support by their university: a 56% gap. Only 26% of students say their university provides access to AI tools: a 66% gap. This is particularly problematic because we have evidence that wealthier students are tending to use LLMs more and in more analytical and reflective ways. They are more likely to use LLMs in a way that supports rather than hinders learning.
How do we close that gap between student LLM use and the support students are offered? My concern is that centralised training is either going to tend towards banality or irrelevance because the objective of GenAI training for students needs to be how to learn with LLMs rather than outsource learning to them. There are general principles which can be offered here but the concrete questions which have to be answered for students are going to vary between disciplinary areas:
- What are students in our discipline using AI for, which tools, at what stages of their work?
- Which foundational skills and ways of thinking in our discipline are enhanced vs threatened by AI use?
- When does AI use shift from “learning with” to “outsourcing learning” in our specific field?
- What forms of assessment still make sense and what new approaches do we need in an AI-saturated environment?
- What discipline-specific scaffolding helps students use AI as a thinking partner rather than a thinking replacement?
Furthermore answering these questions is a process taking place in relating to changes in the technology and the culture emerging around it. Even if those changes are now slowing down, they are certainly not stopping. We need infrastructure for continuous adaptation in a context where the sector is already in crisis for entirely unrelated reasons. Furthermore, that has to willingly enrol academics in a way consistent with their workload and outlook. My sense is we have to find ways of embedding this within existing conversations and processes. The only way to do this I think is to genuinely give academics voice within the process, finding ways to network existing interactions in order that norms and standards emerge from practice rather than the institution expecting practice adapts to another centrally imposed policy.
#higherEducation #technology #university #academic #students #generativeAI #malpractice #LLMs #HEPI