A pair of Identical twin sisters Kayla and Kellie Bingham were accused of cheating in an exam at their college, the Medical University of South Carolina .
As per reports ,the two twin sisters had appeared for their test in May 2016 , during their second year of studies at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) . The test proctors reviewed their answer sheets and found out that both the sisters answered similarly to 296 of 307 questions, including 54 that were wrong.. Following the review and investigation started in 2016 after which they were accused of “academic dishonesty” on their year-end medical school exams.The school’s “honour council” alleged that the twin sisters “were helping each other by signalling and passing notes,”.
But the sisters who were 24 years old during the accusation incident strongly denied of cheating since as per their claim they were seated four to five feet apart in the examination hall and couldn’t even see each other. “It was an eight-hour exam during which we exhibited normal test-taking behaviour,” Kayla told CBS.
Both the sisters decided to counter the accusation and decided to file a defamation suit against the university .
They stood firm on their claims and said that , it is a common phenomenon for twins to have striking similarity in behavior and performance on exams ,and they too had always behaved and performed similarly both academically and in athletics for years. The twin sisters had a strikingly similar score on many exams like the SATs, MCATs, and LSTATs.
While the trial continued for 4 days in November, Nancy Segal, a professor at the California State University, Fullerton’s Twin Studies Center, revealed that as per research many identical twins often perform similarly in tests and other competitions .
Later the jury declared that the school had defamed the twin sisters and awarded the duo a total of $1.5 million (which is approximately Rs 12.39 crore) in damages.
