What to do when my course-mates are making up research results for a class paper?

First of all the term partner is a bit confusing here, are you talking about course-mates or colleagues?

Otherwise ask yourself whether or not you want to be associated with forgery, regardless of whether or not you intend to enjoy the fruits of the action. As an analogy, would it be OK to help with forging counterfeit money just because you don't intend to use the fake money to buy anything with it?

Then there are different levels of taking distance from the act; you can either:

• blow the whistle on the data-forgery, which is what I would strongly advocate for if this work is supposed to be published on a peer-review journal, or
• just ask to have your name removed from the report if it's just coursework. That way you avoid having a fallout with your "partners" and still maintain some level of plausible deniability.

The first option is important in the case of a scientific publication, because data forgery on a publication is not only cheating and ethically wrong, but also is potentially harmful to others who might try on to build on your research results. That aspect is obviously not as important if the paper in question is just a hand-in assignment for some course at the uni.

The second option isn't really the most ethical alternative, and might still be problematic (e.g. if someone questions why you insist on being removed from authors list).

Bottomline is you can't have your cake and eat it at the same time.

This is the type of situation that department deanships are created for. Meet with the dean, explain what's going on. The dean will go over your options with you, and probably ask you to sit tight (=wait) while he or she looks into the situation and confers with colleagues.

(The above answer is written for almost all countries. The exception would be if you happen to live in a country where corruption is rampant. In that case, the best thing would be to keep your head down and be as little noticed as possible.)

Many schools have an Academic Integrity office or officer. Usually you can talk over the problem, learn about your options, and decide to file a formal report or not.

If this situation relates to a for-credit class, I assume you will get a poor grade in the class as a result of not having done the assignment or as a result of asking to have your name removed from the assignment that your partners are submitting. If you are switching fields, maybe that doesn't matter to you.

Reporting academic dishonesty (as opposed to just getting yourself out of the situation) is the right choice, but I know from several personal experiences that it causes short-term stress that you may not want to endure. You probably will find that it's not just the perpetrators who get angry at you. Some people within the school organization may well be annoyed that you are reporting the incident. There will be stress, so if getting yourself out of it is as much as you can contemplate doing, at least do that. Not everybody is ready to be a hero all the time.

Over the years, both as a student and as an employee, I have witnessed academic misconduct. I have never regretted reporting, but I have sometimes decided that reporting wouldn't be worth the trouble it would cause for me. I have taken on a considerable amount of trouble related to reporting, so I don't feel that I have been "weak" on the occasions when I have decided not to. If you've never done it before, you might find it to be an eye-opening experience.