The issue of academic integrity has gained considerable prominence in the last couple of decades. In this article I will attempt to summarize what I see as some key issues, cite a few authoritative articles, and communicate some impressions formed from personal experience as an academic.1 I left India for the first time to join the physics program at Stony Brook University, New York. Everything was new and exciting at this time, especially for someone coming from India, and the formative impact of these five years on me cannot be overemphasized. My first PhD guide, Daniel Z. Freedman, imparted a valuable lesson to me on the importance of honesty and transparency in research. While working on my first research project under his guidance, I came to know that a postdoctoral fellow in the same department was working on something closely related. Freedman instructed me to meet this person, tell him unconditionally what I was doing and how far I had reached, and ask him to respond similarly. This went very well and we ended up publishing independent papers using different methods but with overlapping results. I learned the virtue of transparency, though of course I was fortunate that the other party also acted responsibly. I did not give conscious thought to academic ethics in those days, and it rarely came up as a subject of discussion in my presence beyond the occasional anecdote about some specific scientist. I do not remember any case of paper retraction for misconduct, or even of copying in examinations, during my five years at Stony Brook. This continued to hold true in the initial years following my return to India in 1984 as a postdoctoral fellow and then faculty member at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Explore the full InterDialogue with Sunil Mukhi....