To compare and contrast coverage and outcome of the Jason Arday scandal with that of Cambridge plagiarist William O'Reilly

[OneArtfulUmberSquid]

Partly due to being an academic, the slow news season and the sensationalism, like many people I've been following the Jason Arday story and have been appalled by the scale of the fabulation and the abysmal lack of due diligence by Cambridge when they appointed him - I've also been appalled by how he was presented by the University when he was hired in terms of the emphasis on his back story and what he represented rather than his scholarship.

It's interesting to compare/contrast with the case of William O'Reilly - who was caught plagiarising his own undergrad students' essays and was then found to have plagiarised other scholars' work a number of times before...see https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/27433

He also threatened to sue student journalists for exposing him - not as bad as Arday calling the police, but still pretty risible
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/26105

A further issue relates to his witness for the accused in a rape case despite being involved in the investigation.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/22/cambridge-university-sexual-misconduct-cases
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/18747

I'd be interested to know what anyone else thinks of the two cases in terms of academic misconduct and outcomes, particularly anyone who works in Cambridge. O'Reilly claimed that the scrutinising of his work was due to homophobia.

More here but behind a paywall
https://www.ft.com/content/ae7f16ae-95ab-4aae-a676-0748e3e61b6d?shareType=nongift&syn-25a6b1a6=1

"hello, is that blogs university HR department? It's quinonline, from the HR department of stinging university. I'm calling about a reference for Professor Brainstawn. Was he a professor with you,? Did he publish a paper on "trains I have spotted?"

No, he wasn't and no he didn't.

""I'm sorry Mr brainstawn but we cannot offer you the position fur to issues with your reference"
"Youre an ablist, racist scum. Racist racist racist"

Something a lot of people seem to overlooking in all this is that neither the UK nor the world has any shortage of talented and competent black academics. I cannot imagine Cambridge would have much trouble finding a black academic worthy of the post of sociology professor if they put a little effort into it.

Indeed @Mapletree1985 I feel for all the really talented hard-working young early career researchers who can't get jobs. Cambridge & other universities have behaved very badly.

It feels a little bit like there's a bit if ' it is what it is' in that reasoning. I'm sure there is a way to test and correct things more rigorously without tipping into the realms of corruption.

He wasn’t the first black professor at Cambridge, he was the youngest black professor at Cambridge.

Yes, this case shows how deluded the likes of Cambridge, academia and other enablers are. They've digested so much critical race theory they can't think straight. So when sensible questions are asked, they double down, call the police, hire lawyers, to shut down scrutiny.

But usually the truth comes out in the end and they're exposed as the well paid idiots they are.

Agreed.

I think like a lot of fantasists who either are not challenged or have supporters championing them despite all the contrary evidence and creating a narrative when critics are 'haters' or racists, he was emboldened to the point he believed to an extent, his own bullshit.

A bit like Trump and others.

Narcissism is at the core, not necessarily NPD (though Trump probably has a PD) but a belief that they are more intelligent or just superior to others morally or in other ways, feeds it.

If you talk bollocks about your life for years and surround yourself with people that say 'OMG, you are SO amazing to have survived that and become so successful, you are a victim/ star/inspiration/expert/unique person everyone should admire and if they don't, that's because they're racists/ableists/haters' is a really powerful thing.

Because at what point can you admit you lied? Even about just some of it? You can't. Because so many people loved you and publicly supported you for that story and will no longer do so when they discover it wasn't true.

He wasn't hounded to death by the media IMO. He didn't want to face the people that he intimately betrayed.

I think he could have handled the public downfall but not the intimate one. Who could?

His memoir is due to be published in the UK on the 27th so the media interest and scrutiny of his claims was certainly going to get more, not less intense. I wonder how Simon & Schuster were planning to manage this and if JA was being kept informed of how the publicity etc would be handled?
Blowback from The Salt Path probably has many in the sector in a twitchy mood.

Making it just as likely a black child can go to Cambridge as a white child take years of conscious effort getting in at early years, investing in infrastructure, schools, providing facilities in poor communities and making them accessible cost-wise. Nurturing talent in the same way middle-class families are in a position to do, etc.

Hard work, investment, patience and enforcing the same standards that everyone else is held to.

Cambridge tried to shortcut that, wanted the plaudits with none of the effort.

Their laziness and their own racism meant they just fell for a fantasist. Dangerous for all parties involved. What an almighty mess.

No.

I saw the clip where he claimed to have been part of it. He explicitly said it was a TV series called 7 up which followed people every 7 years and that he exited after he was 14.

It was a lie.

That’s becuase we know that groups have different patterns of attainment, and these get magnified at the extremes as a matter of maths.

@GeneralPeter we need to do a lot more work way before children go to university to examine problems around attainment, and actually ambition - and maybe families' relationships to & experiences of education.

We know, for example, that girls will often be adversely affected by certain ways of teaching and organising schooling education; ditto boys. We have a problem of white working class ambition & attainment in education; ditto for British Carribbean boys. (I'm putting all if this quite crudely & generally). But any solutions to these issues need to be implemented waaaay before university!

What I thought was interesting in the Guru-Murthy interview he spoke about young black kids being continually “put off the scent” if they said they wanted to be an Astrophysicist or something only an elite few typically could. This was just wrong & discriminatory, he said. Anyone can “become” with tenacity & belief if they try hard enough.

I think this belief was sincerely held. You can will it & with the right accommodations anyone disadvantaged truly “can”.

Wow you were in his head and can categorically prove all your claims are true.

These posts are just vile and so distasteful.

Yes, and what good did it do in the end? Their fawning over JA just enabled him to make up more and more lies without being challenged.

If they'd had any sense they would have either not recruited him or sacked him / shuffled him sideways as soon as the fabrications started to emerge.

> Arday did have qualifications, publications and research projects
All of which are now under review, with at least one project found not have ever existed, and another he had no involvement in

There's plenty of eccentric characters and corruption in academia. I cant go into detail. You'll just have to take my word for it. But it doesnt get reported - or even remotely exposed. Racism was at work here. Arday was an eccentric character , no question. He got things wrong. But do I think he was sitting there giggling and rubbing his hands as he plotted to royally screw Cambridge. No I don't. He was probably gauche and crass and didnt really get it.....,as is often the case with a lot of otherwise bright autistic people. And probably wasnt a suitable candidate as a Cambridge professor. But.I think the racism that followed the outing of his wrongdoing was on another level. IMO it wasnt proportionate to the wrongdoing, especially if you factor in other corruption that exists..

Most of the posts on here are mainly blaming the institutions around JA for what happened. I haven't read anything here I would call vile or distasteful.

I thought of the Salt Path. Not quite sure that’s the same since they weren’t claiming professional credentials that helped them succeed in work. I think it’s quite specific for the media to grab onto a story about plagiarism.

Where did I assume all criticism was because of his skin colour?

One of his thesis reviewers semi-quoted Reverend Martin Sherlock in a TLS letter
"His thesis was both good and original, However the good was not original and the original was not good"

I agree and was reflecting on how well he communicated. He was clearly talented in some areas, just not suited to a highly academic role.

Had he not gone down the professorial route I'm sure he could have had a successful media career.

Yet again I keep coming back to the blame lies with Cambridge for the Streisand Affect that they created by trying to censor the initial investigation. It was THE, not the Daily Mail or widely read publication, which was threatened with legal action. Foolish, foolish decision to dig the hole deeper.

@Cars4Gov That’s a good point, and for me again points back to the failure of the institution to both manage the issue - a bad hiring decision - and protect the individual.

And it’s created open season on others at the institution and elsewhere.

ETA: This is a reply to your earlier response, which I can’t find to quote. But agree with your latest post too.

When did the media scrutiny begin? Was it on a larger scale in some quarters because of Cambridge graduate Burnham has become PM, so it was a way of discrediting Cambridge? Tangential, sure, but that's how they operate.

'Burnham the disadvantaged kid got into Cambridge and felt out of place - but how do we really know he earned that place?' kind of thing.

I know a lad who got turned down for Oxford because - he says - while his results were good enough, they discriminated in favour of those from a poorer, more disadvantaged background. He is now going to Cambridge, yet now that uni is under scrutiny for similar so-called 'wokism'.

He was probably gauche and crass and didnt really get it.....,as is often the case with a lot of otherwise bright autistic people.

What makes you think he was bright or autistic?

You dont think he was autistic ?

No, I don't.

Why?