Identical twins were accused of cheating on a medical school exam in 2016. This week, they won $1.5 million in a defamation case.
The twins, Kayla and Kellie Bingham, took the exam in May 2016 during their second year at the Medical University of South Carolina.
How were the twins accused of cheating?
The Washington Post reported that the twins “had turned in test papers with what the proctors deemed unusual similarities. On 296 of 307 questions, they had put down the same answers. On 54 of those, they put down the same wrong answers.”
The twins reportedly were assigned seats at the same table and were “about four or five feet apart” but couldn’t see each other.
The court documents detailed that the proctor in charge of watching the online exam reported that the twins appeared to be “progressing similarly through their examinations and had many of the same incorrect answers.”
Kayla told Business Insider that, “there was no signaling,” and “we were just nodding at a question at our own computer screens.”
Due to the suspicious similarities in test results, the exams were sent to an analytics company which determined that the twins had likely collaborated, according to The Sunday Times.
The twins were awarded $1.5 million
People reported that the twins were originally found guilty by the school’s Honor Council but “on appeal the decision was reversed.”
The twins filed a lawsuit against the university and successfully appealed the decision, receiving $1.5 million in damages, according to CBS News.
Are twin connections real?
Their appeal leaned on studies that have shown that identical twins commonly receive similar test scores and take exams in similar ways due to a what some call a “twin connection.”
“There is a wealth of psychological research that shows that identical twins do perform very similarly on tests of intelligence, information processing and speed of response, and I was not at all surprised they turned in very similar exams,” psychologist Nancy Segal told CBS MoneyWatch.
Segal continued, “When they perform alike, it’s very consistent with the literature. I would have been surprised if they hadn’t scored alike.”