The Jason Arday scandal, part deux

[KatiePricesKnickers]

As the book launch is coming, let the discussion continue.

First thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5563599-the-jason-arday-scandal?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share
This is lifted from the thread in the education section, which is an interesting summary
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-great-and-unfortunate-story-of?r=8w0woc&triedRedirect=true

Or AIBU with not letting this fade away?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5564323-jason-arday-cambridge-plagiarist-thread-two?latest=1

This one has been going a while.

I am now regretting not buying the same PhD as Ben Goldacre’s dead cat.

All these years with my poxy four O levels, when I could have just been a Dr. cos apparently nobody checks anything.

Slightly concerning that Cambridge features as one of the accrediting bodies on one of my professional qualifications. Not sure what their stamp of approval/validation is worth if they can’t check their own work, let alone anybody else’s. I was so proud that despite my academic failure I managed to get a Cambridge nod of satisfaction when I applied myself mind, body & soul. It feels less shiny now.

What excuses will we have today? His fans' justifications are already doing some heavy lifting.

Don't soil your own hard work because Cambridge put virtue signalling over academic excellence.

I think people need to back the fuck off the guy to be honest. It’s actually quite sickening how vicious humans become when pack mentality kicks in. If he’s a compulsive liar as it seems, he’s likely mentally ill and needs some support with that. A thousand cuts by media isn’t going to help. Let’s not forget he hasn’t murdered or raped anyone, he told some porkies and got a role he probably shouldn’t have as a result.

Barely anyone knew who he was a couple of weeks ago. He isn’t a celebrity, he’s just a (former) uni lecturer. Seems people won’t be happy until he hangs, it’s incredibly medieval.

He’s not mentally ill, he’s never had his lies challenged before, by the looks of it.
It also looks like some of his students have been put at a disadvantage.

As for leave him alone, he is seeking publicity himself with his new book of fables.

In other words, you are wanting this to go away. Now the question is, why?

Arday isn't the issue. I'm connected to someone in academia. It's riven with idle, overpaid people who exist in a cosy bubble of self affirmation and they have little experience of real life.

School, Uni, degree, masters, PhD route, and this has lifted the veil on it all.

You're right, it's not about him but his case is a lightning conductor that has lit up the dark reality of the hallowed portals of education.

He may be an inveterate liar and fantasist but he absolutely has been facilitated by many others.

They are the problem.
Arday will not be the only one.

His book sales are going to go through the roof so the PP needn't worry about her virtue signalling. Arday will be just fine.

Celebrity is possibly the wrong choice of words I would say he has achieved notoriety.

Tbf a lot of the mockery is directed at the absolute clowns who facilitated and enabled all of this. They should all be held to account.

He is obviously a deluded fantasist who needs professional help.

I don't understand how the book can go ahead, apologies as I know nothing about these things but when someone is a proven bullshitter can a publisher really go ahead as if it's all true?

Are there not some kind of professional rules/code that state once they know all untrue they must display 'a work of pure fiction' or something on the cover?

I did because of his incredible claim to have been non verbal untill 11
I was always sceptical
But there will be parents of disabled non verbal children who would have clung to that and its gives false hope which is very cruel

This. Pompous pretentious dons who clearly don't know their arses from their elbows,

The shame!

I bet dinner parties over the weekend have been a tad subdued with those cleverclogs in Cambridge.

Well as I'm not "going the fuck away" I will say there is some good to come from this: many of us who have worked in education will tell you that there is so much corruption that it becomes part of the culture. What made me leave the profession was that I questioned why I was contributing to oiling the wheels of these establishments, who were shitting on the very principles that education was built on.

There is someone on TikTok (DYOR) that says he went to school with Arday and he was not non-verbal.

It fascinates me though that people fell for his lies
My now sadly deceaased Sil was a compulsive liar she told some whoppers
One time she told me she had made Jon bon Jovi a cup of coffee when he turned up at a holiday home she was staying in
She also told her best friend she had swum the English channel
But everybody knew she was a fantasist.

Could someone give a summary please of how he actually became a professor? Had he been teaching elsewhere before he got the job at Cambridge?

Professorship is usually decades in the making. It seems like this was his first ever proper academic job though - is that correct?

Was his phD self-funded? Or was it a fake phd all along?

I’d love more insight into the actual process here. Also, what did his students make of him? Have any spoken out?

I agree people should be less negative about him. I don’t see how anyone can claim he isn’t seriously mentally unwell.

Regardless, he isn’t the problem. The system should have caught him when he first submitted a CV.

The case is absolutely fascinating though, so people will discuss it. There’s that, and then there’s bullying him personally, which is different I think.

Is being a compulsive liar a mental illness? I knew of one, very friendly, charming, quite unassuming, who left a trail of destruction in his wake when his lies collapsed. He had got himself an unearned position too. He wasn't mentally ill, he was just manipulating people for his own ends.

What kind of mental illness do you think he has?
If he was seriously mentally ill
It woukd have been obvious to all around him.

Obviously none of us know if he was mentally ill you'd just think that level of manipulation and delusion is so very extreme there must be a personality disorder undiagnosed. We don't know, we aren't psychiatrists.

Maybe he is just ambitious and enjoyed taking the piss out of the whole acamdic set up.

Hs anyone from Cambridge taken any kind of responsibility, will it all be swept under the carpet I wonder?

As I understand it @Lipglossed He was at John Moores Uni and presented a Thesis that was accepted and they awarded him a PhD.
Recently that Thesis was put through some software that found about 85 pages were copied from other previous work by others. He had even copied the errors and typos in the original work, straight cut and paste!
Thereafter other universities accepted the John Moores decision, as is common in that world.

I cannot imagine a balanced, functional person consistently making up such absolutely mad lies, can you? I am not talking about the plagiarism and fake (?) qualifications, which obviously had a massive benefit to him.

I’m talking about the stuff like having run 600 miles, learning to read at 18, having been in a coma and had to relearn speech and walking, playing multiple sports at professional level and so on.

I can’t diagnose him but surely this behaviour is in itself pathological.

Yes I imagine if you spent a lot of time around him it would become obvious there was something far wrong with him. Perhaps mental illness is the wrong terminology - but as a PP said, certainly a personality disorder(or several).

But again, it’s his actual journey to this point that is most interesting to me. Especially knowing how hard it is to even get a lowly short-term lectureship or place on a research project.

Thank you. I’ve read that too about the thesis plagiarism.

Did he go straight from the phd to a professorship at Cambridge, as far as you know? If so, that’s utterly wild. I mean he wouldn’t even have come close to meeting the barest essential criteria for such a job, even if his work had been completely legitimate.

It’s bonkers he would even apply. It’s like applying for and getting a CEO position at a fortune 500 company after a couple of years of office admin experience.