Are Professors Beyond the Reach of the Law?

Is academic fraud illegal?

There seems to be an opinion in academia and the pages of the Virginian Pilot that fraud in academia is not a crime.

I admit that I have a hard time defining the issue of academic fraud. I suppose that if an academic simply made up numbers or facts out of thin air it could be labeled academic fraud. And if – in the process - an academic was paid for an academic study that involved the use of fake data, which could be interpreted as fraud in the way that ordinary people define it.

But it seems that academics and their allies in the media don’t agree that this is fraud. Because they are totally opposed to having Virginia Attorney General Cuchinelli examine even the possibly that a fraud was committed by an academic.

The issue that they frame is that it is totally illegitimate to examine the issue.

I am a student of history. I have read that criminals (or people sought by the authorities) in medieval times could go into a church and claim sanctuary from the civil authorities. Is Academia the modern-day cathedral to which academics – whether they have committed crimes or not - can run because, not matter their guilt or innocence, they are beyond the reach of the secular law?