Cheating costs Harvard titles at Quiz Bowl

Harvard’s championships in four Quiz Bowl academic competitions have been revoked after an audit showed students cheated by looking at questions in advance.

National Academic Quiz Tournaments LLC stripped Harvard University of championships in 2009, 2010 and in two categories in 2011, the company said this week.

The Harvard revelations surfaced in a probe that also found cheating by competitors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan and a high school in Delaware.

In each case, the Quiz Bowl discovered that students had, through an Internet security gap, peeked at parts of questions that would be posed at competitions, the company said. “Everyone understands at Quiz Bowl that you don’t access questions in advance,” said Robert Hentzel, president of National Academic Quiz Tournaments.

“Even if you click on these pages once, it should be obvious that ‘I should not be seeing this,’ and you should click away.”

About 2,500 college, high school and middle school students annually participate in Quiz Bowl competitions, Hentzel said.

The students were able to access the questions because they also wrote questions for competitions, he said.

The security flaw allowed question writers to see the first few words of questions being prepared for other competitions.

By coincidence, Harvard’s embarrassment in the intellectual sphere comes as Harvard, based in Cambridge, Mass., won its first NCAA tournament game Thursday in March Madness.

Harvard can continue to compete in Quiz Bowl competitions.