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???

Yes. In fact, David Butterfield was just a couple of years ahead of me. He is a brilliant scholar (and he was brilliant back then too): miles ahead of everyone else, won virtually every prize going, wrote astonishingly original work, and, unsurprisingly, topped the Tripos year after year.

His piece in The Spectator (I can't link to the archive.ph page right now, but it is worth looking up) is characteristically comprehensive. He charts the many ways university life has become increasingly infantilised: lower offers, no longer publishing class lists outside Senate House, recording lectures as standard, the widening of college fellowships, and much else besides.
This has prompted a theory of my own that is still very much half-formed (so please don't jump on me - I'm offering it with some vulnerability, and I'm genuinely interested in where it might be wrong).

1. There has been a clear erosion of many of the non-academic disciplines of university life that nevertheless shape students profoundly: getting yourself out of bed for lectures, accepting that your results are public, belonging to a cohort, coping with failure, developing independence. None of these are the curriculum, but they are part of the education.
2. At the same time, there has been an expansion of other non-academic elements that, in my view, universities ought to resist: ideological conformity, a growing culture of offence-taking, compulsory sessions on contested social orthodoxies, and so on.
3. Alongside this, there has also been a decline in academic seriousness in parts of the academy itself. The celebration of fashionable but intellectually thin scholarship (Arday's work being an example that has since attracted obvious scrutiny) is one symptom of this.

My hunch is that these three developments are not independent of one another, but may all reflect a broader shift away from cultivating intellectual and personal resilience.

As universities reduce the everyday demands that require students to develop resilience, confidence, and independence, they simultaneously become more inclined to construct institutional frameworks that protect students from intellectual, social, or emotional discomfort. Those frameworks, in turn, can lower expectations of academic rigour and make it harder to sustain demanding intellectual standards. The relationship is reciprocal: diminished resilience encourages lower standards, and lower standards further diminish resilience.
That may be completely wrong - but it seems to me a more fruitful way of understanding what's happening than treating each of these trends in isolation.

For those interested, Butterfield also lists the Oxbridge colleges that still strike him as genuinely serious academic institutions. He is (of course!) remarkably accurate. That doesn't necessarily mean they recruit the very strongest applicants - Magdalene, Cambridge, for example, is on the list despite never troubling the top of the Tompkins Table - but rather that they have preserved a culture that still prioritises the right things.

He seems to be bonkers because the 7 UP claim could so easily be checked so why did he try to lie about that?

You're missing the joke....

I knew another former Chair of Ofsted and she was an absolute excrescence. Stupid and downright nasty with it.

I do think the onus is on Cambridge to issue a statement on this scandal. People are still signing the petition standing in solidarity with Jason:

Stand in solidarity with Jason Arday | Good Law Project

It’s such a complex situation. I don’t think any of us have got anything sensible to say.

I work in a similar profession and don't remember the last time I interviewed anyone white and male. There were <20% in the group that started with me a few years ago in the company.

The people I interview also don't seem particularly brilliant so I don't think it's the case that we're simply wowed by the candidates so much that we have such a disproportionate interview base relative to the British population!

On the contrary I think many here have said very sensible things. And it’s not that complex. Compulsive liar Walter Mitty lands prestigious academic role and isn’t questioned because DEI …

Get off that fence, your arse is getting splinters in it.

I ought to have been clearer - I appreciated your joke. I was just pointing out there is an actual ghost writer involved.

Your response shows exactly why mum‘s net is useless at this kind of question

Hi Jason!

Care to elaborate? Or is it too darn comfortable on that high horse of yours?

@cantabsupervisor resilience requires discomfort, it requires going through the feelings that modern culture classes as 'bad' and enables individuals to avoid experiencing.
Being judged publicly on performance - uncomfy! Bad feeling, remove please.
Being on time physically, or taking physical notes, or interacting with strangers - uncomfy etc.
Being challenged ideologically - uncomfy, definite no. Must protect self from having to justify beliefs.

And so on.

I imagine Cambridge was so excited at being able to tick 2 Diversity Boxes in one go they ignored everything else and now they find themselves with no choice but to double down rather than look stupid and/or get sued

@dapsnotplimsolls It’s the apostrophe that’s the giveaway, isn’t it?

@cantabsupervisor Thanks for the Butterfield article pointer, a very interesting read. Archive.ph link

You may not, but there are lots of interesting, informed perspectives on here and it's not the most complex situation to be debated on these boards. Sounds like you favour the silencing and dumbing down that allows these situations to occur.

The more I read about him, the more I fear that there are reasons to be very concerned for him. There is a higher risk of bi-polar co-occurring in autistic people (prevalence of 7-8% of autistic people, compared to 1% in the general population). Similarly schizophrenia is 3-6x more likely to present in autistic people than the general population. Both of these can explain grandiose delusions that a person can believe about themselves: having run 30 marathons in 35 days with a leg fracture for part of that period, having had a brain tumour and subsequent stroke etc.

I am concerned that no one is actually investigating whether, as potential co-occurring MH illnesses, he may actually have been ill for a significant time, undiagnosed, unsupported or treated because the reflected glory of his giddying ascent has been to alluring to them on a personal and institutional level. I am worried, if I am honest, that the media drive to vilify and label him a fantasist when in fact he may be a tragic example of why autistic people need informed experienced clinical support and monitoring when they have had the childhood history he has (mutism, etc), rather than the knee jerk pillorying he is getting in the press.

Everything else I have said stands - the academics, institutions, and everyone involved in his life and career to this date have been abjectly self-serving and negligent in their professional conduct, but I am concerned that he may actually have been harmed in the process and opportunities to seek diagnosis and support in the face of his fantastical claims missed.

NB: the data states that these increased prevalences are not ‘because’ of their autism, but arise from childhood and other trauma triggers that the presence of autism make it that much more difficult to process and rebound from without ongoing psychological harm.

I dont know much about PhDs but I am a retired Sendco and his claims about his send childhood issues could be proved or disproved for sure. If he was non verbal has asd and had global delay actual professionals would have been involved at a pretty serious level. (Also his would be a remarkable case indeed as global delay means cognitive and executive deficit which I have never know to improve much as the reasons for it are usually permanent features)
Also if he couldnt read until he was 18 his secondary school performed a miracle of effective send support as he gained two gcses.
I came across a huge number of unverified claims like this when I was a sendco but it was parents making up diagnoses, the difference here I guess is that serious people, a lot of serious people believed him.
Maybe I was too influenced by reading Miss Marple as a teenager, she always says she never believes anything people say about themselves . She was referring to people she didn't know well of course.

Yes. Plagiarism is not that uncommon, unfortunately. Telling lies or having fantasies that can easily be disproved is another story. I hope any pointing and laughing can be kept to a minimum, and that the university is concerning itself with his well-being, urgently.

My hunch is that these three developments are not independent of one another, but may all reflect a broader shift away from cultivating intellectual and personal resilience.
I agree. I worked for some years in primary education, and my view is that starts in infancy. Children arrive totally unable to sit still for two minutes unless glued to a screen, and dissolve into tears the second someone says 'no' or they find that the picture book they want isn't on the shelf. Never mind the state of their practical skills like doing up buttons or getting changed for PE.

And obviously, this is not all children, but it's a growing proportion.

My own hunch here is that the decline of free play has a lot to do with this. When you're let loose with a pack of other children from a tender age to roam the local playing field and the woods behind, you develop common sense remarkably fast - because if you don't, nobody will play with you (because you're rude, demanding or cry about everything), and you'll hurt yourself (because you lack that common sense). It's compounded by parents being pushed for time, nurseries and schools being completely risk averse (because very single bump and scratch has to be logged, which gets very time-consuming, and because some parents will complain, which is also time consuming).

It's going to be a long hard to job to turn this supertanker around.

PS Do you have a link to David Butterfield's list of colleges?

Edited agin to say, found the archive link - thank you!

A complex situation?
It seems pretty straightforward to me. He has made a career out of pulling the wool over the eyes of a bunch of people who were absolutely desperate to be deceived.

Decisive action against the weak idiots who allowed this to occur would send a strong signal that might stop it happening again - and I would guess that most minority and ND academics would be in favour of just that.

@MissyGirlieI agree with your point about free play & time. My mum was often late to collect me from school, myself & other dc would be running around the playground with little supervision. Now if I’m late for my dc they are escorted into afterschool club & after 15 mins I’m charged. I played out as a dc in London & learned a lot of life skills that I wasn’t particularly taught by a parent. DC don’t tend to play out now & others would be very quick to judge you if something went wrong. I don’t think we give dc enough time & space to learn for themselves.

Absolutely.

You don't learn to climb mountains by going round them

@Onmytod24 - I made this comment at the beginning of the thread. Can you elaborate on why you think I have nothing sensible to say? And why 'Mum's net is useless at this kind of question'
Are my thoughts and opinions just as valid as your?