Jason Arday, Cambridge Plagiarist?

[Angeruish]

I’m surprised to be the first to mention this, but what do people think about Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism, and the media row that is brewing around him?

For those that don’t know, three years ago Arday became – at 37 – the youngest-ever black professor at Cambridge. Arday claims to have been diagnosed with autism at an early age, and says he couldn’t speak until he was eleven, and apparently only learnt how to read and write at eighteen.

The appointment, made when BLM issues were very much in the news, was made despite allegations of plagiarism in Arday’s doctorate, which were dismissed by Cambridge as being beyond its purview, and because he had been cleared by the awarding institution, Liverpool John Moores.

Those allegations have resurfaced in the past few days, with examples that certainly seem fairly damning, including a misplaced s apostrophe in the title of part of his doctoral thesis (An exploration of peer-mentoring among student teachers’ to inform reflective practice within the context of action research). This blatant error seems to have originated in a phrase supposedly lifted from the thesis he allegedly plagiarised, although in that original case it formed part of a sentence in which it was grammatically correct.

My experience of dipping at random into the paper, which is available online, immediately showed a number of other very basic spelling and other mistakes, almost as if it had not been proofread at all.

In an abstract (the summary written by the author, which is placed right at the beginning of an academic paper) from a different 2018 Arday paper, the following three grammatical/spelling errors occur within a single paragraph of just 160 words (again, this can easily be found online):
This paper employs a Critical Race Theory (CRT) a storytelling method, which operates…
powerful ways in racism unfolds within in the Academy…
dismantle inequity in all its suboardinated forms…

There are now reports that Cambridge – which insists that Arday is the victim of a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility” – is, perhaps not surprisingly, facing a “staff revolt” over the issue. Arday himself complains of “dark arts” being used against him, and says that autism led him to rely heavily on mimicry to make sense of information.

On the web you can find reports of various claims made by Arday (though several universities seem to be scaling them down, now that the spotlight is upon them). And yes, I have copied some of these:

• To have finished his PhD in 2½ years while working full-time and living with a brain tumour.
• To have featured on a television show that ran over a decade before he was born.
• To have run thirty marathons in 35 days, despite having experienced an epileptic fit, a seizure and a leg fracture. He also says he has run 600 miles in six days, just fifty miles short of the world record (no evidence of these extraordinary feats appears to exist, nor have witnesses come forward to testify to them.
• To have raised over five million pounds for charity (when challenged in recent days over this, Arday said this was done in association with others, who he declined to name because, he said, he had signed non-disclosure agreements that stopped him from doing so).
• To have played football and snooker professionally (no indication is given as to how Arday might have communicated on a football pitch when mute, as he says he was until the age of eleven).
• To have had a stroke immediately after graduating, causing him to lose his memory of working on his PhD.
• To have two GCSEs, in PE and Textiles (no timeline is given for when he is supposed to have taken these exams, but both of them would presumably have involved some writing – a skill that he apparently only acquired at age 18).
• To sleep only two hours per night.

Try searching online..... even "The Guardian" has now decided he is not everything he claims to be. So what do people think, and what does it say about higher education nowadays???

I'm trying to remember a case from some years ago when a woman who wasn't a professional writer had a memoir (I think) published which received a lot of attention. Then it turned out she'd lifted a lot of it from other people's work. Her explanation was that she'd read a lot of books in preparation for writing her own book and when she came across passages that particularly struck her she copied them out and stuck them up around the room. Then when she came to write her own book she'd forgotten she'd copied them and thought they were her own notes, and included them in her book. I think her book was withdrawn.
Does anyone remember it? Google isn't helping because I don't remember enough detail.

Omg, Beetle, that is genius! And so funny that I snorted with laughter that was so loud, it startled two spaniels out of their sleep. They are scowling at me now looking like the two elderly muppets in the opera box. Unimpressed doesn’t cover it… 🤣

Was it this one?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/25/nora-roberts-files-multi-plagiarism-lawsuit-alleging-writer-copied-more-than-40-authors

Brilliant. He has a golden opportunity here to claim is was all elaborate performance art to expose the gullibility of humanities academia.

This is brilliant and someone should do it -- just not Jason Arday!!!

Might it be this? It caused quite a row at the time, as the inventor of "Asian teen chick-lit" suddenly fell from grace... (lifted straight from Wikipedia):

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life is a controversial young adult novel by Kaavya Viswanathan, written just after she graduated from high school. Its 2006 debut was highly publicized while she was enrolled at Harvard University, but the book was withdrawn after it was discovered that portions had been plagiarized from several sources, including the works of Megan McCafferty, Salman Rushdie, and Meg Cabot

@Boiledbeetle please write up your proposal for this PhD as an article for the THE. It's brilliant and succinctly exposes what really is the rot in all the DEI virtue signalling being done by institutions. The thing is though, based on the writing done in his 30+ "academic" articles, JA wouldn't be able to write such a coherent proposal.

There is a useful page on the anti-plagiarism website that explains the ‘clean writing room’ approach to academic writing. It’s a systematic approach to avoiding even accidental plagiarism.

That learning is what I am taking away from this sorry mess. That and continuing to immerse myself in the authentic data and detail of my PhD so that I can stand by every inch of it. And in doing so, help to rebuild some of the reputation of the social sciences…😕

But once it’s awarded, where can I get me one of these Visiting Professorships? Only in nice tourist destinations of course…😁

I don't think the thread has yet shown that there is more than just plagiarism at issue here in terms of the academic output. There is also the whole question of research methodology, which a poster on Reddit says is "hard to believe". I will let her/him tell the story:

... (Arday) claims he recruited 32 minority students across 14 universities to take part in just two focus groups. Anyone who’s conducted this sort of research will know how implausible this sounds. He does not state how the focus groups were run (another red flag), but says he used a flip chart, so I assume in person. And he states he audio-recorded them.

Anyone who's run focus groups knows 16 participants is huge, and relying solely on audio recording will generate unintelligible slop; you simply won’t be able to attribute the narrative. It’s nearly impossible to comprehend how someone brought together 32 students from 14 different universities in this way.

Furthermore, perhaps his most egregious claim is that he analysed the data inductively to derive themes. However, this appears to be a plain lie. He simply “borrowed” Memon’s themes and added his participants' quotes. He later had to publish corrections—which MDPI published as a formal correction notice to acknowledge he did this, which renders the whole paper logically incoherent. You don’t test pre-existing results in inductive, qualitative research. He outright copied and lied; then had to cover his tracks, but did not seem to have the methodological understanding to do this in a sensible way!

I think at least some of this originates from the Retraction Watch piece (full marks to them for stepping in knowing that the lawyers had scared off the Times Higher Educational Supplement)
retractionwatch.com/2026/07/27/cambridge-jason-arday-plagiarism-allegations-times-higher-education-exclusive/

@Boiledbeetle : the premise of one of the articles in (IIRC) The Times was that JA is a Sacha Baron-Cohen creation, continuing his Ali G theme.

Unrelated to that, I found this article interesting:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/08/05/the-jason-arday-farce-is-an-embarrassment-to-black-britain/

Love BoiledBeetle’s work!

I think what does me in is that people seem to be unable to think that two things are true: darlings of the liberal left are very capable of being grifters and conmen (see also the trans bandwagon) and there are bad actors wanting to exploit and pull down those figures who seem to be succeeding against the odds.

University of Glasgow has said he didn't work there.. surely it's a week of journalism and a few phone calls and the whole sh!tshow will collapse?

Astonishingly, there are still people in the comments on that Retraction Watch article passionately defending Arday, berating other commenters for daring to question his work, and posting links to the letter of support for him…even as the facts pile up ever more damningly.

(Beetle, I absolutely loved 'the valorisation of “exceptional narratives”'. Just perfect!)

Love it, Boily!

Finding an academic department with the guts to support a student through that might be tricky. In my fairly limited recent-ish experience of academics, they love to wang on about 'speaking truth to power' and how critically important this is, but if you try it, they will squash you like a fly.

Obviously NAAALT, but when I tried to point out a series of errors in a book that had been written by his supervisor, mine just laughed at me, told me to contact the author directly if I was that bothered, and moved the conversation on.

I have just looked at the publication date of the memoir and Simon & Schuster are still going ahead with 11 August, in the US, and 27 August, UK. It reminds me of the attitude of Penguin to The Salt Path - they are not interested in any integrity towards their readers. However, Penguin did kick, the fourth Raynor Winn, back to January 2028.

There was also a thread about a soon to be released book - Stalked : A Harrowing True Story of Stalking, Strength and Survival in Rural Wales. A lively thread on Mumsnet showed that many of us thought it was AI authored. The extracts read like a thriller in the style of Raynor Winn. IIRC it was the kitchen smelled of badgers and decay .... This one got delayed until January 2027.

I expect its because that person ,regardless of sex, race or anything else , fits the need in that moment and that blinds people to the screaming red flags behind them. My ,now dead, ex husband managed to convince wealthy, educated women to give him hundreds of thousands of pounds to invest on their behalf. He was tall, charming,well dressed and mixed with the 'right' people. It was an utter pile of lies but the 'dinner party' set in the Cotswolds simply wanted to believe that he would get them enormous dividends that ten minutes research online would have shown them was utter nonsense. He spent part of the money on his flashy lifestyle and paid their annual dividends with their own money. Once the Cotswolds money pot collapsed and he was taken to court he simply moved to Ascot.

@AngelinaFibres : are you Sarah Ferguson?

No😂 ( although my exhusband also liked young girls. They were legal but only just). He left me for a 17 year old once I hit 30 and had had 2 tiny children. He left my replacement once she got older. By the time he was on the third woman he'd reinvented himself as a man who had attended Oxford University, had a house in France and another in Cheltenham and was CEO of a huge company ( he had worked for them in a middle management role years and years before but was sacked).

I've been following this case closely as I was originally a passionate admirer of what he had achieved, gave him 'likes' online etc.

But then as someone who has completed a PhD I feel aggrieved at the quality of his work and the blatant plagiarism. There is no excuse, including 'he wasn't supervised properly'. You know from GCSE / A level that copying other peoples' work is not acceptable, and it should have been picked up at BA and MA level.

I would not have dared turn in the quality of work he did.

I should add that I have reviewed excerpts of Arday's work and can see the extent of the plagiarism from another author. This is stated online: A specific statistical analysis identified 188 sentences in Arday’s thesis that were identical or highly similar to Paula Zwozdiak-Myers’s 2009 thesis. The probability of chance overlap was estimated at 1 in 100 billion.

Sorry for the multiple posts!

I agree with Katherine Stock's general point that DEI in academic should not and can not extend to the intellectually average or those who cannot uphold academic integrity. Regardless of race, ND status, class. Though her point on ND was rather clumsy.

Haha that's a film I'd watch 😂

@AngelinaFibres : Dreadful. Sorry that you went through that..

It also turns the spotlight on LJM university.
A couple of years ago, I happened to read a good part of a thesis by someone there in the Education Faculty. I was utterly shocked by the poor quality of what was written. There was only one idea that the author repeated ad nauseam.I thought any supervisor would surely have tried to coax at least one other idea from him. BTW, there was no hint the author was black.
I'm aware there are probably many graduates of LJM who may be reading this and did an excellent job with any work they submitted , as well as excellent supervisors.
I don't want to tar everyone with the same brush. However, I'm wanting to support @Yorkshirelass04 's complaint that the JA case undermines the efforts of genuine hardworking individuals, who put the graft in.
I hope LJM will take the hint and uphold academic standards, notwithstanding the fact they need to raise the cash, so effectively under pressure to take the money from any aspiring PhD who comes waving the pound notes!

What I find astonishing is the claim by Cambridge that it is not within their remit to review or check research of their candidates as part of the selection process. That PhD theses awarded elsewhere before the date of appointment are outside their purview. I have seen the comments about the illogic if this - that the PhD necessarily precedes appointment to professor, but isn’t verifying the quality and compliance of a PhD no different to, say, checking a doctor or surgeon’s qualifications? Would they not: check the awarding medical institution exists, that the candidate attended/graduated, and obtain a detailed transcript of their degree? As a minimum?

I mean, I worked in investment banking and if it came to light that anyone had even so much as massaged their O Level maths grade from a C to a B, they were fired. I’ve watched more than one person, carrying a box with their personal possessions, being escorted by security from the building … and all the mutterings on the floor as to ‘wasn’t it HR’s job to check that before they even started?’