The problem with cheating on homework assignments is...

[gofaster]

... the cheaters often don't realize the impact of their cheating.  In this instance , it directly affected the decision of a judge in a high-profile murder trial.

Kinda makes you wonder about the veracity of some of the other "university studies have found" blurbs that pop up in the news from time to time.



Will lazy college students sidetrack Scott Peterson's trial?  
Tue Jan 13, 3:53 PM ET  Add Crimes and Trials - Court TV to My Yahoo!
 

By Harriet Ryan, Court TV

(Court TV) —


When a judge decided last week to move Scott Peterson (news - web sites)'s trial out of Modesto, Calif., he singled out as particularly persuasive an independent poll by a local college professor showing the overwhelming majority of the community believed the accused murderer guilty.


Superior Court Judge Al Girolami said the telephone survey, which gauged public opinion across the state on the case, was not only "the most thorough" submitted, but also clearly indicated that jurors in other parts of California were more apt to keep an open mind.


But hours after the ruling, six of the professor's students confessed they had fabricated the raw data because they were either too busy studying for finals or to poor to afford the toll calls, according to a local report.


"We falsified the info," one student told the Modesto Bee. "The stuff we submitted wasn't true."


Just what the impact of these revelations will be is unclear. The judge is scheduled to meet with lawyers Jan. 20 to choose another venue for the trial, and he could change some or all of his ruling at that time.


Prosecutors bitterly opposed moving the trial out of Modesto and immediately urged the students, who spoke to the newspaper anonymously, to contact the district attorney's office.


Chief Deputy District Attorney John Goold would not say whether they have interviewed any students, nor whether they plan to ask Judge Girolami to rethink his decision, but he acknowledged the office was intrigued by the reports.


"We're working on it," Goold said.


In the controversial study, California State Stanislaus criminal justice professor Stephen Schoenthaler assigned 65 students to act as polltakers. The work, which accounted for a fifth of their grade, consisted of calling numbers at random from phone books in different California counties and asking a series of preset questions about the Peterson case.


The students submitted the answers to Schoenthaler, who analyzed the results. All told, 1,175 people were to be surveyed.


The study Schoenthaler submitted to the court suggested that 70 percent of Stanislaus County's residents had formed an opinion of Peterson's guilt. In comparison, only 47 percent of Los Angeles residents and 51.8 percent of Santa Clara county residents had a similar opinion.


But some of the students who participated said they invented the results because the process was too expensive and time-consuming.


Although prosecutor Dave Harris did not find out about the students' claims until after the judge's decision, he raised concerns about Schoenthaler's methodology during a hearing last Thursday.


"Is it possible that college students went home and never made these calls and just made these numbers up?" Harris asked, noting that the results showed much higher degrees of bias than studies commissioned at the same time by the defense and prosecution.


Even the defense's expert found only 39 percent of Stanislaus residents believed Peterson guilty.


Girolami did not base his decision on Schoenthaler's poll alone. He also said he thought Modestans, thousands of whom volunteered to search for Laci Peterson (news - web sites), attended candlelight vigils and later a memorial service, might be too emotionally involved in the case and predisposed to "view the victim as their own."

   



But the judge referred obliquely to the study when deciding where the trial should be held. He approved three Bay Area counties — San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda — while ruling out the inland counties from Fresno to Sacramento because Schoenthaler's survey indicated people in those counties shared the bias of Stanislaus residents.

Sacramento was one of the counties prosecutors preferred.

Schoenthaler did not return a call seeking comment Monday. The university is conducting its own probe of his work.

"We will conduct an extensive review to compile the information necessary to determine exactly what happened and the appropriate course of action," said university president Marvalene Hughes. "Scientific misconduct and academic dishonesty are serious breaches of professional ethics and research standards that are not tolerated at this university."

Peterson, 31, faces the death penalty if convicted of killing his pregnant wife and unborn child.

[kappa]

Links feked...

[gofaster]

Couldn't get the link to work, so I added the text.  Thanks for the head-up!

[FUNKED1]

*INSERT SNOBBY COMMENT ABOUT CAL STATE SCHOOLS HERE*

[gofaster]

Is that a big, collective "Oh, crap!" I hear coming from the student dorms?

Prosecutors in Scott Peterson's trial rush to find students who faked data  
Wed Jan 14, 4:57 PM ET  

By HARRIET RYAN, Court TV

MODESTO, Calif. (Court TV) — Prosecutors in the Scott Peterson  case have issued a subpoena for a professor's computer, class roster and other records in a mad-dash effort to identify college students who fabricated data in a survey used in court.

A judge cited the study in his decision last Thursday to move the Peterson's double-murder trial to another county.


Deputy District Attorney Dave Harris said during a court hearing Wednesday that his office is racing to get sworn statements from the students before Jan. 20, when the judge is expected to select the new site for the capital trial.


Prosecutors, who bitterly opposed moving the trial from Modesto, presumably will ask Superior Court Judge Al Girolami to reconsider his decision in light of the flawed survey. The students' poll indicated 70 percent of Stanislaus County residents had already made up their mind about Peterson's guilt, a significantly higher percentage than in other areas of the state.


The phony results were first reported in the Modesto Bee. Nine of the 65 students gave interviews to the paper on the condition of anonymity, saying they made up data for a 10-county telephone poll because they were busy studying for finals and could not afford the cost of the long-distance calls.


The criminal justice professor who supervised the study, Stephen Schoenthaler of California State University Stanislaus, attended Wednesday's hearing and said through a lawyer that he would not hand over the material until ordered by Girolami to do so.


Schoenthaler's lawyer, Ernie Spokes, said the professor was hesitant to submit the raw data and other information because he was wary of violating state educational code concerning student privacy. He also said the professor was awaiting results of the university's internal investigation.


"He is devastated," Spokes said, adding that the professor was stunned that his criminal justice students — aspiring to careers in law enforcement — would lie in a class project.


Spokes said Schoenthaler was trying to determine how many of the 1,175 people targeted for the poll the students actually called. "He's called some of them, he's still in the process."


Schoenthaler was ordered to return to court Jan. 20. On that date, lawyers and the judge are scheduled to choose between four courthouses approved by the state Administrative Office of the Courts as appropriate venue changes. They are San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Orange counties.


The flap over the phony survey overshadowed a judge's refusal Wednesday to dismiss charges against Peterson. Defense lawyers had asked a second judge to review Girolami's November ruling that there was enough evidence to hold the 31-year-old for trial in the killing of his wife, Laci, and unborn child.

(I didn't bother pasting all of the info in the story, just the first paragraphs.  The rest of it dealt with whether there was enough evidence to hold Peterson, blah blah blah.)

[takeda]

Basing justice on opinion polls = RETARDED
Using "free" "slave" inexperienced labour for a serious opinion poll influencing a life/death situation = EXTREMELY RETARDED

Well it makes sense, I never did homework because it looked retarded.