O'Reilly's case was indeed bad but Arday is on another level. "A bit plagiarised" ???? 188 separate passages were identical or near identical to another student’s work. In his PhD.
And when his PhD was scrutinised he kicked back hard - actually getting the police involved to try and stop the scrutiny. He is not some innocent who accidently ended up here.
From The Times:
Dr David Harris, an academic at Plymouth Marjon University, who had been reviewing Mr Arday’s work as part of a wider research project, and Prof Martyn Hammersley, a sociologist at the Open University whom Dr Harris had asked to review, wrote to Prof Cremin in 2023 with evidence of Mr Arday’s plagiarism, according to emails seen by The Times.
Prof Cremin responded by saying she had met Mr Arday to discuss the article in question, which was published in 2018. After their meeting, he agreed to take the article down from an online journal platform and re-upload it.
They had raised their concerns with Prof Cremin after Dr Harris wrote to Mr Arday directly asking him to clear up “certain oddities and confusions” and explain similarities between a 2018 paper published by Mr Arday and a study by Prof Anjum Memon, a renowned epidemiologist, and his team and Jason Arday had responded: “I have no problem with constructive criticism, but the tone of your emails are unkind and hostile. You are a monument to the fact we live in a society where grammar is valued above equity. If only all academics were as diligent in their fight for equality as you have been in attending to my spelling.”
He asked Dr Harris not to write to him again, saying: “Anything further from you will be considered bullying and harassment.”
When Dr Harris did so, Mr Arday reported him to police for harassment. Devon and Cornwall Police declined to pursue the case.
I think it is the scale, and the level of ridiculousness, of the deception that has given this story such legs and I think that would be the case regardless of Jason Arday’s race.