Cheating?! Seriously? Half of you seem to have your holier-than-though moral/ethic compass completely outta whack....
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Genesis 2:15-17
Where do you draw the line? Would book-learnin' be considered cheating? It does give you an unfair advantage over your peers who perhaps don't read as much? Would getting an answer to the proverbial "Will this be on the exam?" question cheating? Would rotating with someone who actually writes questions for the boards cheating?
As for the issue of copyright, books and journal articles are also copyrighted material. So, by extension, all modern medical knowledge has at one point or another been copyrighted in one form or another. Therefore, aren't attendings and teachers guilty of breaking copyright law when they teach us this copyrighted material? Are we breaking those laws when we take notes? When we share those notes with others? Of course they're not, thanks to "fair use". And I would argue (although I'm no lawyer) that creating and using "recalls", as long as you aren't selling them for profit, falls under the rubric of "fair use", despite what the board agreement you've all signed claims.
Only a couple of you have raised a couple of key issues that were not brought up by CNN, nor much here on this board, namely money and evidence.
First, the money. The boards, and by extension some of it's members, not to mention an entire industry make money hand-over-fist on credentialing, CME, MOC, etc. I would think that's an inherent conflict of interest on the part of the examining boards and would additionally make Becker's arguments moot. He's in it for the money and can suck it.
Second, the evidence. Although touted as a great idea "for the good of the public", there is limited, if not conflicting evidence as to how valuable, besides for the aforementioned money aspect of it, all this credentialing, MOC, etc is in practice, ie. does board certification actually make for better physicians. If no money exchanged hands in this process, would there be a benefit to anyone? I guess the jury is still out on that.
Finally, besides what has already been mentioned, some additional solutions to combat the supposed concerted effort to write down as many questions as possible by having each test taker remember a number of them:
1) Ask the questions in random order. It's all computerized nowadays. It should be trivial for the computer to randomize the question order.
2) Better yet, present each test taker with a different subset of questions; again, very easy in this 21st century world.
3)
After all, what are the boards going to do with true cheaters. "Old School" anyone? Cameras can now be hidden in almost anything, eyeglasses, a lapel pin, a shirt button, etc. If hearing aids can be miniaturized to fit invisibly inside ones ear, why not a wireless receiver? It's only a matter of time before contact lenses will be able to beam a computer screen image directly into our retinas. All you need is a van and a team of friends, and voilà!
Oh look, thanks to the googlez... these are the first couple of links I stumbled upon with a simple search string...
Oh, and this...
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/106263-wireless-contact-lens-display-now-a-reality
So, there, suck it. You guys have no clue what real cheating is. As usual, the Europeans are way ahead!
Oh yeah, so thanks to this post, don't be surprised if those Rapescan machines show up at test-taking venues. Time to buy some of their stock. Muahahahahahaha....
See, everybody profits.
Except you.
