If they can’t prove who was given information and who wasn’t, what other choice do they have other than to void the entire test?
I would imagine most all of these folks are currently employed at least in some degree, if not entirely, because of their certification. The revocation absolutely implies to candidates employers that very likely could have cheated the most difficult part of the exam. So employers COULD rightfully suspect and react to employing a potential cheater, even if the candidate took the exam fairly. Crazy stuff, with terrible implications for everyone involved.
About a decade ago, one of the specialty physician certifying exams were compromised by a test prep company. After taking the exam, physicians funneled back questions to the instructors running the program. The company was sued and the physicians found providing questions were punished severely. I think the physicians were banned from further certification and were also reported to their state boards. The ones that took the course were sent a letter of reprimand.
As expected, there was ALOT of litigation. Even some of the ones (including the testing company) who got their hand ‘caught in cookie jar’ sued. I hope the Court had good counsel before they made this decision, because this is not going to be over anytime soon.
If they don’t have specific information then they shouldn’t have started this mess in the first place, but presumably they have something solid or they wouldn’t be moving to kick one of their members out. Assuming they do, they should handle it with some of the steps that any organization should use to handle a PR mess, including but not limited to:
- Own the mistake. They sort of did this, but then screwed up the messaging. The result is that every public article that’s out there casts doubt over the entire class. Why? Because their primary goal wasn’t for the candidates but was to keep anything getting out that could “needlessly impact the Court’s reputation”… that’s from the internal email that went out asking for confidentiality prior to the public release. Apparently the “Court’s reputation” comes at a high premium to the reputations of the candidates. A lot more people passed, but a lot took the test as well (i.e., is this pass rate or are individual scores abnormally high? How is it distributed?). Look for anomalies following from the specific information which you should be acting on. Question individuals. If they’ve done this then make the process transparent because right now it’s not. That’s certainly true for anyone outside of the organization (including the candidates’ employers, for instance), but from what I’m seeing it’s not very transparent to the candidates either. At a minimum explain enough about the evidence to get out ahead of the stories (and their one-size-fits-all remedy) that cast doubt on everyone.
- Fix your process. Firing someone may be necessary but probably isn’t sufficient. The opacity and accusations of arbitrariness have surrounded the tasting portion of that exam since the dawn of time.
- Make good with the people that your process and your people screwed. $1000 fee doesn’t cut it. Given the variance expected in tasting exams, a lot of these people may well not pass the next one.
Note this from the press release at the end of page 1.
“due to clear evidence that a Master breached the confidentiality with respect to the wines presented for tasting”
I’m not sure where your take away of “Clearly they don’t have any hard evidence” is coming from, but the CMS would seem to strongly disagree with you there. They seem to have found multiple “somethings” (again, treading lightly on how I label this) that said something was wrong. Keep in mind, it’s 54 people that they scrubbed their tasting results for, not 23.
I think we all need to wait for the closure on this from the CMS. There is so much speculation going on, and it’s really not fair. It’s one bad apple.
The only reason I’d think they want everyone to redo it is they suspected a a large number of the takers were in on the info.
The only reason I’d think they want everyone to redo it is they suspected a a large number of the takers were in on the info.
Also possibly because the judging is subjective and a taker that did well may have been failed because their performance didn’t seem so great compared to those that cheated and did perfect.
Like I said, if it was me, I would have reported it on the spot. If I took the test, didn’t get the help, and I was asked to retake as you noted here, I would be PISSED. I would have called my attorney and filed a suit.
I’ve been surprised before but expect a good portion of “the Court’s” weekend was spent figuring out their liability. And even if there were grounds for legal action, it’s a pretty small organization where, presumably, one of the primary benefits is that atmosphere and your colleagues, rather than a place like the medical board mentioned above where you might be able to sort of blend away after the fact. Assuming you still want to be a member, I can’t imagine a lawsuit would ingratiate you with your new peers.
Two very different cases, though. Physicians deal with life and death issues, the worst a somm can do is choose the wrong wine to match your dinner ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
Actually, I think this opens avenues to make the testing even better in the future: send out disinformation on what wines are being served, and see which dumbos try to use those wines as answers.
I agree… if they can prove someone cheated, they should ban that person… otherwise you can’t ban a whole class… Also as mentioned already, most of these are well qualified already… they passed 2 parts of the exam already not joe schmoe off the street.
Might 15 pass? 12? 18? so we’re talking a few incremental people? this is way way wayyyy worse. this isn’t the same as a medical license… no life/death situations.
they should tighten up their controls to prevent this going forward, but pulling it from everyone is brutal and wrong.
He was also featured prominently in the Esquire series “Uncorked” which was great and one I’d recommend if anybody liked Somm. I downloaded it off of Amazon. Like 6 episodes of people training in the build up to the master exam
https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2018/10/somm-struck-off-by-court-of-master-sommeliers
Person named but not confirmed. San Diego based. Had four students he “taught”
Can’t find Reggie Narito’s profile on the CMS website anymore…
http://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/members
Error 404.
My point being they didn’t make every physician retake the test and the alleged cheaters had the cajones to sue.
If a ‘life and death’ profession didn’t invalidate a clearly compromised test and the proven cheaters still sued, I imagine these newly minted Master Somms are already ‘lawyered Up’
Mark my words, this will be a an even bigger mess.
We’d all like to think we would. If we’d spent 5 years studying for a test, I can’t say that for certain.
After I Googled the picture, I remember him from Somm
Will all 54 get a chance at the re-do? Or only the ones that passed?
Wow, I know 4 of the people who got invalidated for their MS…heartbreaking as many had been at it for a long time and have to go thru tasting again and all are passionate, driven and dedicated. Truly sad.