Mirror Image (short story)
[1] Baley is unexpectedly contacted by Daneel regarding a dispute between two reputable Spacers on board a ship, who have just submitted essentially identical papers about a revolutionary mathematical technique.Neither will admit guilt and it would reflect badly on the ship's captain not to resolve the authorship prior to arrival at the planet where the papers are to be presented.Both robots respond identically to Baley's questioning, stating they would lie to protect a human's reputation, until he capitalizes on the single difference between the parties: one is elderly and towards the end of his distinguished career, while the other, though brilliant has yet to establish himself fully.In contrast, he puts to the older mathematician's robot that his master's reputation would remain and speak for itself, but the younger's would be completely ruined by an indiscretion of his youth.He thus surmises that the elder is the plagiarist, because if the younger's robot received no instruction to lie, it could easily switch sides; while if the elder's robot had been instructed to lie, but became convinced that it should now tell the truth, it could not easily countermand the order of its own volition when only a reputation and not a human life was at risk, and this has led to conflict and shutdown.