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???

his claims about his send childhood issues could be proved or disproved for sure.

But of course anyone who dealt with him in a professional capacity won't be able to speak.

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.

We hear about adjustments such as not being called upon to speak in seminars or give presentations. These are methods of assessing learning, alongside essay writing, and skills which employers can reasonably expect graduates to have. Everyone feels a bit nervous or anxious about giving a presentation, but these days it's 'anxiety' and personal development is stunted because people aren't challenged.

WWII in Asia was horrific.

The witness statements from the post-war atrocity trials are horrendous.

Based on history/events in other fields of human endeavour I'd say once a high profile B.S.er attracts rich/powerful patrons those patrons find it very difficult to engage the reversocycle when the truth starts to emerge.

Yes the professionals may not be willing to speak if they are still in work. But he himself could produce the evidence. Also if he claimed support at his first university for any of his disabilities he would have needed to show that evidence. John Moore may not wish to put this evidence on the front page of the Daily Mail but I cant see why Cambridge didn't ask for details. I actually know why they didn't, I am from Cambridge town not gown. No one scrutinises them apart from themselves!

I suppose some of this shift could also be attributed to the change from a state funded university system to student funded.

Changing a student into a customer alters the dynamic of provision, and expectations.

The focus is on expanding customer base, and increasing profit. But the customer is always right. Customers don’t like feeling uncomfortable.

“Line go up” but standards go down.

It's astonishing Arday is unable to provide proof for any of his outlandish claims. Almost as if they're all made up.

Now where have I seen that erroneous use of an apostrophe before?

The “evidence” around his SEND claims is common sense though. He said he had 3 hours a day of speech therapy 6 days a week from early childhood. This is obvious nonsense. Maybe a billionaire would seek this level of support for their child - it’s unlikely that it would be effective though. But a poor kid in a family of 4 children with parents who both worked and reliant on the NHS???

You don’t need to talk to the speech therapist to know with 100% certainty that it’s total BS.

I don't think it is usual to look for evidence of disabilities unless people are asking for accommodations. In that case you'd usually get something current. Cambridge isn't coming of this smelling of roses, but not demanding proof of his childhood or undergraduate diagnoses is not the problem.

He would have been interviewed on his more recent scholarship and whatever accomplishments he described in his CV, and we haven't heard much about either of these things. That doesn't mean Cambridge should ignore the problems raised about his earlier work. But they don't conduct an MI6 style deep-dive into your early life at academic interviews, even at Cambridge

Sounds like a common or garden compulsive liar to me.

But they don't conduct an MI6 style deep-dive into your early life at academic interviews, even at Cambridge

@Oftenaddled Someone did query his work but they were shut down after a threat from Carter Ruck lawyers.

Regarding his PhD and academic integrity, his PhD supervisor at LJMU, Phil Vickerman, failed all his GCSEs at 16. He wasn’t being nurtured by anyone with a great academic track record themselves.

I think somebody senior at Cambridge has been and possibly is still a little bit in love with Professor Arday.

Someone did query his work but they were shut down after a threat from Carter Ruck lawyers.

And who was paying for that? Were they acting pro bono?

The main casualty of this will be other minorities and women. I've worked in very male dominated fields all my life and have had people say to my face that they presumed I was a "diversity hire" and were surprised I was actually good at my job. It's a bloody nightmare.

However let's not forget that there is no shortage of Billy Bullshitters in this world. I've met plenty of them, including those who have faked cvs and made wildly exaggerated claims about their experience or abilities. They come in all genders and races, including many, many white men. Just take a look at any Forbes 30 under 30 list.

Yes, follow the money - and the request itself for representation must track back to Arday’s fan club protector at Cambridge.

Love this!

Sure - and that's about how Cambridge dealt with allegations about his plagiarism after the fact. That was a use of intimidation which closed down a legitimate concern. Clearly wrong and I suspect it accounts for the press enthusiasm now the floodgates have opened.

It's the idea that Cambridge should have fact-checked his claims about disabilities in his early life and at another university that I take issue with. These could not be disclosed by any professional without his permission. And to force him to give this permission could hardly be justified if he was appointed based on his current work with any reasonable adjustments based on current diagnoses.

I doubt the standard of his work improved so much as to justify the appointment based on his scholarship alone, but I wouldn't expect them to have scrutinized his autobiographical claims and postgraduate career at that point. Plenty of other ways to assess him.

Interesting.

You agree with Butterfield’s “"there are too many women in Humanities, won't somebody please think of the men" then?

"...obviously entire passages lifted is a knowing transgression, but a few sentences amid a 80,000 word thesis that have ended up mislabelled or unlabelled"

It isn't simply a few sentences - or indeed entire passages - it's much more than that.

His PhD was put through Turnitin - a proprietary plagiarism checker that scans documents and compares them to its own large database of publications and theses as well as work submitted through its system at other universities around the world.

Alongside the plagiarism from Zwozdiak-Myers, which has been reported in the press, there is substantial plagiarism from a range of other sources including a PhD thesis by Christina P Ligadu at the University of Wollongong. There is also a lot of plagiarism from sources by academics in the field, and in particular Arday seems to have borrowed liberally from various handbooks.

This is not just a few sentences, this is wholesale and deliberate.

And yet Cambridge have associated themselves with his alleged backstory and in effect placed their considerable weight behind them. Personally I always checked before vouching for someone publicly. This is why I was viewed as a trouble maker I always asked for proof.

Agree. Also too many butthurt “inclusion means i’m excluded” jumped on it.

I can believe it, my DH and I went to the Brit Forces cemetery and museum by the River Kwai (as in the film) because a great uncle had died there - an seeing the graves and how very young they had been (19-22, mainly) was deeply saddening and the images and film in the museum was utterly devastating. I think there has been a shying away from difficult topics in school generally - fear of offending etc - that means there is a lack of intellectual and psychological resilience being fostered in university students that has contributed to the lowering of standards there? If not using the correct pronouns or telling a student they will fail a module if they don’t get an assignment in by the extended deadline results in tears and tantrums, how can we expect them to explore difficult, controversial and at times disturbing periods of history or themes in fiction?

Add to that the impact of self funding degrees - people (Parents and students) believe they are ‘customers’ and have rights and expectations based on being fee payers, rather than mutual rights and expectations based on the academic relationship between tutor and student. Perhaps it has always been this way in the US, too? But I haven’t got that impression before now. But look at Trump. No way he ‘passed’ his degree without outside help or money being thrown at the university!

They, what, should just be glad to have had a turn on the inclusion merry-go-round before it moved on to someone fancier?

People of merit who lost out because of this farce have every right to be upset.