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Academic Integrity Policy

Last updated · June 2026 · Applies to every Embark engagement

1. The Principle

The student does the science. Mentors design coaching around the student’s own question, challenge weak reasoning, review data and drafts, and rehearse presentations — but the experiments, the analysis and the writing are the student’s work. This is not only an ethical position; it is the only strategy that survives ISEF judging, where working scientists probe ownership in person.

2. What We Will Not Do

  • We do not provide pre-made or recycled projects.
  • We do not ghost-write papers, abstracts or application materials.
  • We do not fabricate, beautify or selectively delete data — and we teach students why honest negative results are scientifically respectable.
  • We do not misrepresent mentor contributions: any assistance beyond the student’s own work is disclosed on ISEF forms exactly as the rules require.

3. Compliance With Competition Rules

Every project is designed to satisfy the ISEF International Rules and Guidelines — including Scientific Review Committee (SRC) and Institutional Review Board (IRB) requirements, human-participant and vertebrate-animal rules, and display-and-safety regulations. Forms are completed truthfully and on time as part of the coaching itself.

4. Use of AI Tools

Students are taught to use AI tools the way competition rules and good research practice allow: as aids for literature search, coding assistance and language polishing — always disclosed where required, never as a substitute for the student’s own analysis, writing or understanding. A student who cannot defend every sentence of their paper has not finished it.

5. Enforcement

Requests that would breach this policy end the engagement. We would rather lose a client than place a project we cannot stand behind — a standard that has coexisted with, and we believe explains, our results.