Twin sisters Kayla and Kellie Bingham were both aspiring doctors. However, their dreams were shattered when in 2016, they were accused of cheating on their year-end medical school exams, following which they filed a defamation case against the school.
The identical twins, then 24, were in their second year of studies at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) when they took the test in May 2016, according to reports.
On reviewing the results of the exam, the test proctors said that the performance of the two sisters were quite similar. The identical answers to 296 of 307 questions, including 54 wrong answers, raised alarms, following which the twins were accused of “academic dishonesty”.
The school's "honor council" alleged that the pair "were signaling one another and passing notes," court documents revealed, ultimately ruling that they cheated on the exam.
However, one of the sisters, Kellie, told Insider that they were given assigned seats "about four or five feet apart" at the same table for the exam, but couldn't see each other.
The Binghams filed a lawsuit against the school. After a four-day trial in November, the jury awarded them $1.5 million in damages.
It has been reported that the twins had a history of scoring within a point of one another on official exams, such as the SATs, the MCATs and LSTATS. These records were shared with CBS MoneyWatch.
According to Nancy Segal, a professor at the California State University, Fullerton's Twin Studies Center, several studies show that identical twins often perform similarly in tests.
"There is a wealth of psychological research that shows that identical twins do perform very similarly on tests of intelligence, information processing and speed of response, and I was not at all surprised they turned in very similar exams," Segal, who is a psychologist, told CBS MoneyWatch.
"When identical twins perform very differently it catches our attention," she added. "When they perform alike, it's very consistent with the literature. I would have been surprised if they hadn't scored alike."
