I was accused of using AI in my dissertation but I wrote it all myself
A medical student at the University of St Andrews was accused of using AI in his dissertation, despite writing it himself. The student, Harrison Sharples, had to attend a hearing to defend his case, but the allegations were initially upheld due to technical issues. However, after a successful appeal, the university decided not to uphold the allegations, and Sharples received full marks on his dissertation.
- ▪Harrison Sharples, a 20-year-old medical student, was accused of using AI in his dissertation on the impact of play therapy on reducing anxiety in hospitalised children.
- ▪The allegations were raised by a human marker who noted the dissertation's polished tone, consistent grammar, and formulaic paragraph structure, which are characteristics often associated with AI-generated content.
- ▪Sharples successfully appealed the decision after the university accepted that technical issues had affected his ability to present his case during the initial hearing.
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| Original publisher | Bbc |
| Canonical URL | https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crelev8gw5xo |
| Publication time | Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:46:49 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-11T08:50:42.317Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-11T08:50:42.317Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | ZVuO_-aZAi9E · 1 stories |
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| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
I was accused of using AI in my dissertation but I wrote it all myself4 hours agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleMarta LeshykBBC ScotlandHarrison SharplesHarrison Sharples faced allegations of using AI in his dissertationIn August last year, medical student Harrison Sharples was "shocked" to receive an academic misconduct alert saying the dissertation he had spent his summer writing had been flagged as being AI-generated. The 20-year-old University of St Andrews student could not understand how the markers had thought the work wasn't his own.He told the BBC he hadn't even considered using AI as he had plenty of time to complete the assignment and had enjoyed writing it.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Bbc.
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