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?

I think that social media plays a role, and how things mushroom so quickly.

I remember when the Elizabeth Holmes story broke - it was huge, the investors and labs were trolled, and the was a definite undercurrent of "woman..."

It is a defining characteristic. As is Arday's colour.

But, I don't think all women in science came under scrutiny because of her.

I think you need to move on from trying to convince that Jason Arday was in any version of 7 Up entitled 7 Up.

I agree. It's tedious and I'm sick of hearing about it.

I think the amount of scrutiny work gets is very variable in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Some of this is due to the now historic rapid expansion of these subjects and high student-to-staff ratios.

Some of it is due to the tacit agreement that the flow of students into institutions must be maintained or increased so no income streams are lost from the UK government or self-funders, meaning that the students are recruited to maintain the system, which has become self-levelling via a constant adjusting of admissions criteria, courses, grades and output. The pressure is always on passing students through the system.

And some of the poor oversight it is due to the turn away from empirical data, clear method and challenging of arguments in favour of writing about eclectic Theory, now solidified into a po-faced and politicised orthodoxy perpetuated by people who have come up through the system and have been (bench)marking one another's homework for decades.

It's easy to see how Arday as a candidate could have been given minimal critical supervision on a project which just sounded good to the department and which will have ticked boxes for internal or external compliance / funding, as will Arday's own student profile.He was working and being supervised in a poorly-defined subject-area, where a pick and mix of Theory and accounts of his own life could be allowed to substitute for systematic data-gathering and comprehensive analysis of a body of scholarship.

Additionally, plagiarism can be hard to spot, however the viva should tell examiners whether the student knows his own work - but supervisors and examiners may have just validated his subjective account and free-form ideas if that's what their own work relied on and not recognised lifted material.

Once accused of plagiarism, Arday claimed inadequate supervision and SEN adjustments, which will have put supervisors, department and examiners into an urgent defensive spin: they have the power to decide to define something as serious plagiarism or just poor citation pratice, enabling a line to be drawn under it. No-one at Cambridge will have questioned the award or indeed read the thesis

I think we will have to wait for book to come out.

It seems that way. It’s along time ago but no one supervised me at uni. The guy who was supposed to had MH issues so I just got on with it.. My offspring on the other hand is doing Environmental Science at an RG uni and has to do a lot of peer review and submit own work for same. He’s been taught how to cite references, present and analyse data, all that. I’m impressed with the academic rigour. It’s quite stressful though.

He reminds me of Belle Gibson - a compulsive liar whose lies just grew and grew to the point that it was out of her control. I also think there was a level of delusion where she’d told the lies so many times that they became true for her.

As pp has pointed out selective mutism is really not the same as non verbal, where someone doesn't have the capacity to speak at all. I think it is an important distinction

Not at all. Idon't like criminal fraud offences. I don't care who the subject is and don't like those who turn a willing blind eye to it.

Integrity matters and numerous certificates on walls are utterly meaningless if you haven't got it.

There will be more than just him. It needs looking into properly.

I've met plenty of degree/ masters/ PhD holders.
They're no better than anyone else, but many think they are.

Do keep up - even he himself now says he didn't mean any of the TV programmes....anywhere in the world.

First of all a 'spokesman' said he used 'Seven Up' as a "general term" (???) then Arday said he was actually referring to an initiative run by Black mothers in the area he grew up that just happened to be called that, was never documented in any way and doesn't exist now.

It’s the equivalent of “you don’t know him, he goes to another school…”

For me the issue isn't Arday so much as Cambridge University. Oxbridge has long been held up as demonstrating absolute academic excellence - the highest standards in the world. As such I would expect any research coming out of either Cambridge or Oxford to be exemplary, in terms of methodology and presentation, with the clearest of language used and flawless spelling and grammar avoiding any ambiguity. No risk of leading the reader to understand that a king was walking about headless, for example.

I would expect that any published work from any well-regarded university would have been checked and rechecked and carefully proof read for errors, poor methodology, clarity of expression, S&G mistakes and typos by diligent academics. I would also expect that anyone producing academic work would welcome questions, critique and opportunities for argument in order to further understanding of the subject.

As output from Cambridge, as other well-regarded universities, is often referred to by government departments, organisations and individuals forming policy or just to ensure best practice, I would expect that before anyone is employed in an academic capacity by Cambridge (or similar) their previous relevant work, such as a PhD, would be gone over with a fine toothcomb, to ensure it matches the standard expected of an elite university. The fact that this does not appear to have been done to any extent whatsoever, raises serious questions about the quality of work done in this department, and possibly in the university as a whole.

I understand that there are people who face severe obstacles to high achievement, much as there are people who have characteristics which make attaining gold medals in the mainstream Olympics beyond their reach. In order to address this, we have the paralympics. We know that paralympic medal holders have performed extraordinarily well, but we are aware that they have not (being unfortunately unable) reached the absolute pinnacle of the fittest human achievement that the main Olympics fetes. And so with academia. Oxbridge and other elite universities are expected to be producing the absolute heights of research that humans can manage under optimal conditions. Other universities exist to celebrate and support the work of those who cannot quite reach those standards but nevertheless have a very great deal to offer. If Cambridge wishes to do likewise, it would be very helpful for society if it could make that clear.

That’s so interesting.

So he’s saying they used the term like Elastoplast, Hoover or Kleenex? Or like when people had Skins’ Parties?

Apparently, you go on a Love Island holiday now. Which we called 18-30.

I’m 50/50 on this. He could be totally lying but that begs the question WHY?
Especially when it’s such an easy thing to disprove.

Or, wild speculation here: he watches Seven Up in a sociology or Education class and uses the term as one for a longitudinal study?

It’s definitely interesting. I honestly don’t know one way or another but I do think we should hold off insulting the guy . Not saying it’s been particularly horrible on here but elsewhere it’s vile.

Edited for ropey grammar!

I’m 50/50 on this. He could be totally lying but that begs the question WHY?
Especially when it’s such an easy thing to disprove.

Most of his lies are easy to disprove.

Should have been edited for the ropey argument.

Why would he lie about being on 7-up?

Why would he lie about finishing a marathon on a broken leg that swelled to twice its size (photographic evidence says not)

Why would he lie about having a masters from Birkbeck?

Why would he lie about being a visiting professor at Ohio university?

Why would he lie about having brain surgery and losing his memory shortly before defending his dissertation?

Why would he lie about having testicular cancer?

I mean, you're right, it does seem stupid to lie about stuff that is so easily disproved. And yet he did.

You are giving far too much weight to meaningless wording (“a general term”) that was clearly just a fudge to try and cover up a lie he’d been caught out in.

The other claims I’ve read about have tended to follow the same pattern. He brags about some exceptional thing, is questioned on it, backtracks to a less exceptional version of the thing, then comes up with some reason why there’s no evidence of the thing.

It's all in his reply to a Guardian journalist.

"To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.”

That’s the best and most honest thing this man has ever said 😁 I was on the salt path threads last year - I love a middle class long con. I think we are fascinated by confidence tricksters because we want to believe that we would see through them.

I don’t work in academia but I’ve worked with plenty of liars - maybe there are more of them about than we think?

I have heard senior teachers tell blatant lies and fiddle data.

People are telling lies and fiddling data left, right and centre but they aren’t also running 500 marathons on a broken leg, passing a phd viva when supposedly recovering from a brain tumour or saying they couldn’t read or write until they were an adult and then literally a couple of years later graduating from university and becoming an academic. There’s telling lies and then there is telling porkies that can be seen from space 😁 It’s fascinating

Lucy Bronze played an entire tournament with a fractured tibia. Archie Goodburm competed at Commonwealth Games with three brain tumours. God bless him. I can’t comment on the couldn’t read/write thing but I’m dyslexic and struggled to spell, use sentences or paragraph until I left school and started to use an electric typewriter and then a computer, which somehow got me going - although I avoid any lengthy handwriting to this day.

Lucy Bronze is a professional athlete, not a fun runner. Was Archie competing for medals two weeks after brain tumour surgery? Being dyslexic and doing better with a typewriter is not the same as being so unable to read or write you could only apparently complete GCSEs in PE and Textiles (which both require some reading and writing iirc). I am interested in your insistence there is nothing out of the ordinary with these fantastic claims all coming from one person and each with no evidence to back them up.

Being a Cambridge Professor isn’t ordinary.

But presumably you don't believe they are lying and come up with wild theories as to why their blatant lies are actually true?

I agree it's the sheer audacity of it which makes it so fascinating. I am in awe of him for how much he got away with. He's a very clever man, just not at sociology of education.

I also think it was a horrible thing to do and caused real harm to lots of people (students and those more qualified for the jobs).