Cheaters Researching Cheating

You taught them for years
To raw undergrads
Who knew little math.

You nearly became
One of them yourself,
A real researcher

Publishing results.
You lacked ambition,
And you lacked the chops,

And you floundered when
Collaboration
Would have, might have helped.

There but for the grace
Of limitations. . . .
You won’t teach them now.

The implications
Of their results were
Manipulated,

Just too cool for school,
So fascinating
To think that cheating

Could be so lightly
Tested and measured
And choreographed.

Once more, the problem
With learning something
New about humans,

Truly new, remains
That it still takes one
To claim to know one.